


Numbers Series

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 10:56:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11356053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: There's sex, mystery, science, no theater, and angst. Sequel to the *Names* series. (Archived at RatB)





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

One

  
**One  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
"What exactly did he say?" Alex paced around the room again, anything to keep him from physically shaking his lover's mother. 

"I've told you a hundred times, all he said was 'Mom,' and then he was cut off. I can't tell you anything else." Sarah Mulder looked distraught, and her red-rimmed eyes told the tale of her long night since receiving the call from her missing son. 

"There was no background noise? No radio, no tv, no other voices? Nothing?" 

"No. Nothing. We were on the phone for a few seconds, and then there was a dial tone. That's all there is to tell." She glared at her son's lover. "I can't believe you didn't even tell me he was gone. I'm his mother." 

"And you would have called me this morning?" She said nothing. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I wouldn't even know that you heard from him if it weren't for Dana." He glanced over at Scully sitting on the couch. 

"Look, we all want to find him," Dana said. "It's not going to do us any good to work against each other. Mrs. Mulder, I'd like to put a trace on your phone, just in case he calls in again." 

"Is that really necessary?" 

"Are you kidding me?" Alex shouted. "Do you want to find him or not? Maybe you'd like to lose another child!" 

"Alex, go," Dana said, severely. 

"Dana�" 

"Alex, I'll meet you outside." 

Reluctantly, he left, pacing around in front of his car. After he had calmed down, he sank bonelessly to lean on the hood. Dammit. If Mulder was alive, why the hell had he called his mother? _Why didn't you call me?_ he thought, in despair. _What's going on, Mulder?_

Dana came out a few minutes later. "Well, that was brilliant strategy, Alex. I'm not sure she'll even call me now, if he calls back." 

"And the trace?" 

"She's okayed it."

"At least that's something." 

"Alex," she took his arm. "Just leave Sarah to me, okay? I deal with her better than you do." 

"She doesn't hate _you_. I know she wishes that you were with Mulder, instead of me." 

Dana nodded. "I know. I'm sorry. I wish things could be different for you two." 

He shook his head. "That's just one of the things that Mulder and I are going to have to work out when he comes back." 

She smiled. "Right. _When_ he comes back." She sighed. "I've got to go into the Bureau and set up the trace on the phone, then get the evidence reports on the murder. Where are you going?" 

"Right back into the bowels of hell," he muttered. 

"What?" 

"Nothing," he said, with a smile. "I'll call you when I know anything, okay?" 

"Call me _before_ then. I want regular check-ins from everyone, okay?" 

He nodded. "Sure. Talk to you later." 

The bar was such a cliché he almost had to laugh. Right out of a fifties noir movie, the patrons were just as likely to be trading weapons information as conducting a clandestine affair. He signalled the bartender. 

"You seen Red?" he asked, sliding a fifty across the bar. 

"Maybe," the bartender said. "Who's asking?" 

"Tell him it's Alex." 

The man gave him the once-over and slipped into the back room. He came back out a few minutes later, shaking his head. "He's not in." 

Alex nodded and turned, then whipped around in a move that took the bartender completely by surprise and grabbed him by the collar, slamming his head against the bar. "Tell him I _really_ need to see him," he whispered into the guy's ear, before letting him go. 

The resulting commotion brought forth the object of Alex's search in the flesh, greasy hair, cheap suit, and all. He smiled. "Alex," he drawled, with no trace of an accent. "What's the problem?" 

"No problem, Markov, except trying to get to see you, of course." 

He nodded. "Must have been some sort of misunderstanding, Alex," he said, ushering the way to the back. "Come on in." 

They stepped through the curtained entranceway, and sat at a table. There was no one else in the room. "I thought you were being a good boy, now, Alex. Why come and see me?" 

"Believe me, I wouldn't, if it could be helped. You've heard about Juda?" 

Markov nodded. "Yeah. Unfortunate. She was useful, on occasion." 

"Did you do it?" 

He shook his head. "I haven't seen her in two, maybe three months." 

"Do you know who did it?" 

He shook his head again. "Different circles, Alex. We've all spread out so far since the good old days." 

Alex grimaced. "Could you find out?" 

"For you, or the cops?" 

"Strictly personal. I'd be willing to pay for some information." 

"Maybe we could trade some services." 

Alex shook his head. "No. I did that once before, and I almost got my ass pulled right back in. I'm not making that mistake again." 

"I don't work for them anymore, Alex. I'm like you now." 

"You're nothing like me. And we both know that no one ever gets away. The only difference is, they don't want you dead yet." He stood up. "Can you do this, or not?" 

"Sure. Give me a couple of hours." 

Alex wrote a phone number on a piece of paper. "It's my cell. Call me when you know something." 

"No problem," Markov said, grinning. "Hey, good to see you again, Alex." 

"Yeah, a real thrill," Alex said, on his way out the door. 

Back in the car, he called Dana. "Did you find out anything?" 

"They lifted five different sets of prints from the car. One Juda's, one Mulder's, the other three they're still running." 

"That doesn't make any sense. I'd have thought that whoever killed her would have wiped the car clean." 

"That's not the only thing. They found Mulder's gun, in a dumpster three blocks from the warehouse." 

"Great. So he's unarmed, too. At least they'll be able to test the gun and prove that he didn't shoot Juda." 

"If the shooter didn't take his gun first, and kill her with it." 

"Of course. Anything else?" 

"I'm still getting the runaround from InSec." 

"Agent Thomas?" 

"I'm in his waiting room right now. I'm giving him ten more minutes, then I'm shooting my way in." 

Alex laughed. "Aim for the crotch, okay?" 

"I knew my target practice would come in handy one of these days. Did you find out anything?" 

"Not yet. I've got some feelers out, though. Hopefully they'll get back to me. Where's Beth?" 

"With my mom. They went to have lunch." 

"Do you think that's safe?" 

"I told them to keep to cabs and public places. I'm supposed to meet them in an hour." 

"Okay. I'm attached to the phone if you hear anything." 

"Me, too." 

"Agent Scully." Agent Thomas' voice dripped honey as he ushered her into the room. "Always a pleasure." 

She smiled at him, deciding to try charm before she had to shoot him. "Agent Thomas. Thank you for seeing me." 

"I'm sorry you had to wait so long, but things have been so busy around here lately. I trust that you were given access to all of the files that you wanted?" 

She nodded. "I'd still like to see Agent Mulder's car, however. I went to the impound, but they told me I'd need clearance from you. If you could call them, I'm sure we could clear everything up and I could get out of your way." 

"Why would you like to see it, exactly? It's been gone over thoroughly, I can assure you." 

"Oh, I'm sure it has. And for that reason, my looking at it won't make any difference at all." 

He nodded. "Of course." His smile had gotten even thinner. "I'll call and tell them to give you complete access." 

She smiled broadly at him. "Thank you." Before she left the office, she said, "I meant to ask you�why were all of the files taken out of Agent Mulder's office?" 

"In view of the last few days' disturbing developments, the Office of the X-Files has been shut down." 

"I can understand a closure, but why the removal? It didn't happen the last time. And surely my husband would have been the one to authorize such an action." 

"There are more powerful men in this division than even your husband, Agent Scully. They would be the ones to ask." 

"Of course." She smiled again. "I'll just go down to the garage, then." 

After the door had closed behind her, Thomas rang a number on his private line. "It's starting," he said, then broke the connection. 

There was nothing out of the ordinary in the car, although she hadn't really expected to find anything. It was more of a way to touch base with him, to see something that was his. She sighed. She couldn't even imagine what Alex was going through. 

Only, Alex did things, made things happen. She envied him his free-agent status, which allowed him to move in circles a little less circumspect than it was expected that F.B.I. agents would. She was firmly convinced, however, that they were going to find Mulder, that he was going to be all right. It hadn't been the same before, when he had disappeared�there was Cancerman to think of. Now, it was better. 

She sat down heavily in the driver's seat of Mulder's car, shifting when something sharp poked her in the side. She felt like she was sitting in the back seat, the seat had been pulled so far away from where she kept it in her car. Reaching around, she gasped when her fingers scraped over the sharp object that had dug into her side. Pulling her fingers away, she saw that one of them was oozing a small drop of blood. 

"What the�" She got out and pressed firmly around the seat where she had felt it. Finally able to complete a grip on whatever it was, she pulled it out of where it was wedged in. 

"Jesus�" she said, dropping it on the ground. It was a syringe. 

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate the day out," Beth said, sipping her water. "I'd go crazy if I had to stay in the house all day long." 

"I know what you mean," Margaret Scully smiled at her. "I'm glad for the chance, myself. I don't get to spend as much time with Dana as I'd like to, and I miss having a daughter to do things with." 

Beth smiled. "I never had a mother before." Her smile faded a little. "I'd like one like you." 

Margaret noticed her pause. She reached over and took Beth's hand. "Things can only get better between the two of you, you know. You just need to give her some time." 

Beth nodded. "Well, I've got lots of that." She glanced over her menu. 

"I wanted to ask about Fox," Margaret started, hesitantly. "I hate to ask Dana anything that she can't tell me�" 

"There's no news, so far. I know Dana or Alex will call me just as soon as they know anything. They'll find him." 

Margaret nodded. "Of course they will." 

Beth set the menu down. "I think I've got a few minutes before the waiter comes, and I've got to powder my nose. If he comes, could you order me a spinach and mushroom salad and an iced tea?" 

"Of course, dear." 

Beth stood, took her purse, and walked away from the table. The waiter did, indeed, return, and when he came back with their drinks before Beth came back, Margaret Scully went to see if she was okay. 

"Beth," she said, pushing open the ladies room door, "are you all�" 

The rest of her sentence was cut off by a sharp intake of breath. Beth was lying on the floor in front of the vanity, unconscious. Clutched in her hand were several bloody tissues. 

"Oh, my god," Margaret said, checking her pulse, then ran out into the restaurant. "Someone call an ambulance," she yelled, then headed back into the bathroom. 

Alex paced around the living room of the apartment, stopping periodically to check his watch. 2.05 p.m. He still hadn't heard from Markov, and Dana hadn't called in either. He'd run out of leads; until he heard from one of them, there was nothing he could do, and it was making him crazy. 

Finally, he lay down on the couch, closing his eyes. It felt like a lifeline. He could close his eyes and pretend that it was all the same, that Mulder was here, that they were cuddled together, not watching the game. He clicked on the tv. 

A small noise brought him instantly up and on edge. He pulled out his gun, training it on the apartment door, as it began to open. When it pushed fully forward, he released the safety. 

"Don't shoot." 

Mulder stood in the doorway, hands raised. 

"Oh, my god." Alex was on him in an instant, dropping the gun uselessly down and pulling his lover into his arms. "It's you, my god, it's actually you�" The hug was bone-crushing. Mulder half-laughed, struggling to catch his breath. 

"Alex�" 

"Mulder," Alex cut him off, capturing his mouth. "I love you," he repeated again and again, kissing him wherever he could, always coming back to that incredible mouth. 

"Alex," Mulder said again, not making the slightest move to get away from the embrace, "I think we should get out of the doorway." 

"Oh, yeah," Alex said, pulling him inside the apartment and over to the couch, pushing him down on his back and climbing on top of him. "You're here. Where were you? What happened?" He could not stop kissing him. 

"Alex�" Any thought Mulder had was instantly lost in the onslaught of lust that he found himself the grateful recipient of. Finally, they both gave up trying to speak. 

Alex had pulled his lover's jacket off, and was struggling to remove his jeans. Mulder, being crushed underneath him, was not able to help much, but submitted to his ministrations. Eventually, they were both naked, neither making a move off of the couch. 

"I need you," Mulder said. "I missed you. Alex�" His words were lost in a moan as Alex trailed kisses down his chest, pausing only to suckle his nipples. 

"Yes?" Alex murmured, bathing Mulder with his tongue, tasting every inch that he had access to. 

"I�oh�" The rest was last in another gasping moan, as he felt his erection engulfed in a hot and willing cavern of a mouth. The sensations were overwhelming�warmth, moisture, and the relentless sucking that brought him quickly to the edge of madness. 

"No," Alex said, pulling away. 

"No?" Mulder asked, incredulous, aroused almost to the point of pain. 

"No," Alex repeated, firmly. "I want you." 

Mulder drew his knees up instantly. "Yes. Anything." 

Alex used the pre-cum that both were leaking copiously to lubricate his lover and ease inside. "It is not possible to love anyone more than I love you," he said, making the final joining motion, then leaning down to capture Mulder's mouth once again. Every movement he made was punctuated with kisses, accenting each thrust, every possession. It was too much to last for long. 

Their mouths were still joined as they pulsed in and around each other. Alex broke the kiss only long enough to pull out of Mulder, then collapsed on top of him again. "I am never going to be able to rest on this couch again," Alex said, breathlessly. "We have to move." 

Mulder gave a short laugh. "Remind me to get kid�" 

"Don't even joke about it," Alex warned, putting a hand over his mouth. 

"Sorry," Mulder said, kissing his fingers. "I love you." 

Alex smiled. "I know." 

Dana put the syringe into an evidence bag and slipped it inside her purse, just managing to get it shut before an InSec technician came to escort her away. 

"Did you have enough time?" he asked her, coldly, obviously not caring one way or the other. 

"Yes," she said, shrugging off the hand at her arm and exiting the garage. It wasn't until she was in her car with the doors locked that she took a look at her hand. The blood hadn't soaked through the tissue she'd wrapped around it; in fact, the scratch was so small that it had stopped bleeding almost immediately. She wrapped a tiny bandage around it. 

The syringe proved unhelpful. It didn't _look_ used, but she couldn't be sure. She'd have to get it tested. 

"It's fine. I'll be fine," she said to herself, starting the car and heading for the Bureau's medical labs. She knew most of the technicians there, and knew that they'd give a rush to whatever she needed. 

"Diane," she said, smiling at the pretty doctor who greeted her. "I've got a bit of a problem." She explained the circumstances to her, pulling the evidence bag from her purse. 

"God, Dana, of course I'll do it. Right away," Diane said, with no small trace of concern. "You don't know if it was used?" 

Dana shook her head. "It doesn't look used, but I need to be sure." 

Diane nodded. "Of course. I'll do it right now. What about your hand?" 

Dana held up the bandage. "It's probably healed by now," she said, with a smile. 

"Okay. Just wait here, and I'll get started." 

It was a good twenty minutes before either of them spoke again. "Where's Sam?" Mulder asked. "We've got to find her, Alex, before they do. She's in danger." 

Alex shook his head, as if trying to make himself remember what was happening in the outside world. "She's with Dana's mother." 

"Alone?" 

"Dana's supposed to meet them. I was waiting to hear from her when you came in." He squeezed him again, to re-assure himself that it wasn't a dream. 

Mulder reached for the phone and dialled Scully's cell. "Answer, answer," he muttered, as the phone rang and rang. "Dammit," he finally said, hanging up. "Do you know where they were going?" 

"No. We could try Skinner." 

Mulder dialled the number of the A.D.'s office. "Kimberly," he said, when he got through, "it's Agent Mulder. Is Skinner in his office?" Pause. "Do you know where he is?" Another pause, shorter. "Okay, could you please have him call me�no, wait, I don't have my cell." He glanced at Alex, who nodded. "Have him call this number as soon as he can," he said, and gave the number of Alex's cell phone, then hung up. 

He stood, pulling Alex up next to him. "We have to find them, Alex." 

"We don't even know where to look." 

"We'll try Scully's favorite restaurants while we're waiting to hear from them. We can't just wait for them." He kissed Alex, hard. "You realize that all I really want to do right now is lock the door and take you to bed, right?" 

Alex smiled. "And I thought it was just me." 

"It is you. All of you. I don't know what you've done to me, but you're all I've been able to think about." He kissed him again. 

"Mulder, if you want to get anything done, we've got to stop this," Alex moaned. "Come on." 

"Okay," Mulder said, pulling away with difficulty. They went into the bathroom and cleaned up as best they could. Mulder took his back-up gun out of the bedside drawer and tucked it into his waist. Alex handed him a jacket. "Let's go," he said, smiling. 

The hospital emergency room was busy when the ambulance arrived, but Beth's case, being a non-responsive, was taken first. Although her vital signs were relatively strong, she remained unconscious. Margaret Scully was shown to the waiting room, where she dialled her daughter's cell phone number. She tried three times, but each time hung up after ten fruitless rings. Calls to her son-in-law were equally unhelpful. She settled for leaving messages at their home and offices. 

She tried to get some information from the desk nurse, but all she was given were forms to fill out. She managed a reasonable job by copying information from Beth's wallet, but hesitated over whether or not to call Sarah Mulder and have the real next-of-kin informed. Taking into account her own feelings as a mother, she made the call, then sat down to wait. 

It wasn't until Dana had been waiting at the lab for twenty anxious minutes that she remembered her mother. Realizing that she'd left her cell phone in her car, she quickly called her office on the lab's phone and picked up her messages. 

After listening to the message that her mother had left her, she went to find Diane. "I've got to go, Diane. A friend was rushed into the hospital, and my mom's with her. I have to go and see what's going on. I'll take my cell with me, though, so�" 

"I'll call you the minute I know anything," Diane said. "Don't worry, Dana. Just go." 

Dana nodded and made her way out of the building. 

"So, what's been going on?" Mulder asked, maneuvering the car. 

"They shut down the X-Files," Alex said. 

"That's a shock," Mulder said, wryly. "It's been nearly 36 hours." 

Alex nodded, staring at him to memorize every feature. Mulder smiled, feeling his gaze. Caught, Alex looked away. "They had the office cleared within six hours." 

Mulder gave him a sharp glance. "Cleared?" 

Alex nodded. "InSec," he said. 

"Damn. Who?" 

"An Agent Thomas," Alex said. "I've never seen him before. Your basic pencil-pusher." 

"Great." 

"Mulder, what happened to you?" 

"You know about Juda?" 

Alex nodded. 

He sighed. "I didn't do it." 

"I know," Alex said, softly. 

Mulder smiled at him, catching the double meaning in his words. "I was on my way to a farmhouse about an hour out of the city to talk with a witness on the Pitney case," he continued, "when I was stopped on the road about ten minutes away." 

"Stopped? By who?" 

"There was a roadblock set up�two cars with flashers going." 

"State police?" 

Mulder nodded. "That's what I thought. One of the troopers came up to the car. I was about to pull out my i.d. and explain the situation, when everything went black." 

"They knocked you out?" 

"Yeah. I never even saw it coming. When I woke up, about an hour had passed. I was in a warehouse in the city, tied up, gagged, in a heap on the floor." He glanced over at Alex. "Juda was there. They were arguing�I don't know what about." He paused. "I saw her die, Alex." 

"Who was there?" 

"Two men. I wasn't close enough, and it wasn't light enough, to get a good look at the bigger guy, the shooter. I wouldn't even have known that it was Juda, except that the shooter said her name when they came back to pick me up. I did the play-dead, limp thing when they came back over to me, and the gunman picked me up. I managed to get a pretty good look at his friend." 

"Do you know him?" 

"No," Mulder said. "But I'm going to." 

"Then what happened?"

"They figured out that I was awake, or they knew that whatever they gave me would wear off soon. They gave me an injection, and knocked me out again. When I woke up again, I was in a barn at an abandoned farmhouse." 

"Why didn't you call me? I was worried sick." 

"I was in a fog, Alex. I called the first number that made any sense to me, but the phone went dead and I got cut off. All I really wanted to do was get back here as soon as I could. Luckily, I was able to hitch a ride back." 

Alex nodded. "I'm just glad you're okay." 

"For the moment. And as soon as we know that Sam and Scully are all right, I'll tell you everything else." 

"Yeah, we've got some news ourselves." 

Alex paused to take out his cell and try Dana's number again. This time, he got through. 

"Alex?"

"Dana, finally! He's here, Dana. I'm with him." 

"Mulder? Thank god." The relief was evident in her voice. "Alex, you've both got to come to Mercy Grace hospital." 

"What happened?" 

"It's Beth. She collapsed this afternoon. She's in emergency. I just got here myself, and we don't know anything yet." 

Alex glanced over at Mulder, then motioned for him to pull over. "Beth's in Mercy Grace Hospital," he said, cupping the phone. "Dana's with her, but we have to get over there." 

"What is it?" 

"They don't know yet." 

Mulder pulled away with a screech of tires, making a very neat, very illegal u-turn into the other lane. 

"We're on our way," Alex said, then hung up the phone. 

Dana finally managed to get to speak to the attending physician about Beth. 

"She's still unconscious," he said. "It seems as though she had some sort of a hemorrhage, although she didn't lose a lot of blood. Her vital signs seem fine, as they were when she was brought in. We're ordering bloodwork, an MRI, and a CAT scan. That's all I can tell you right now. We just don't know anything else." 

"Have you ruled out the possibility of aneurysm?" 

"Right now, we can't rule out anything. All we can do is keep an eye on her and try to figure it out as quickly as possible. I have to go, now."

"Thank you, doctor," she said, as he went to order the tests for Beth. She glanced at the charts on her friend, and the monitors. It just didn't make sense. She seemed to be fine. A horrible image of Melissa came into her mind. 

"I know what you're thinking." Margaret Scully's voice startled her out of her reverie. 

"Mom," Dana said, hugging her. 

"She's going to be fine, Dana." 

Dana nodded. "I know. She has to be." 

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	2. Two

 

Two

  
**Two  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
"She's awake now." The nurse came up to them in the waiting room. "You can go in�only one of you at a time." 

"Is she going to be all right?" Mulder asked. 

"The doctor will be able to tell you when he knows anything." 

"We'll wait here for you," Alex said, squeezing his hand. 

She looked much smaller and paler than he could remember seeing her since she was a child. She gave him a smile. The doctor was in the room with her, writing on her chart. 

"So, we're going to order those tests, and then we'll see what's going on," he said. He turned as he heard the door open. "This is your brother?" 

She nodded. "Yup. He comes back from the dead, too. It runs in the family." 

"It's the Mulder family characteristic," he agreed. Turning to the doctor, he asked, "How is she?" 

"I want to run some more tests before I can tell you that." 

" _She's_ fine," Beth said, waving. "Hello, I'm over here. Remember me, the patient?" 

"Oh, so fainting and bleeding in ladies' rooms is normal for you?" 

"Well, not for a while, but�" 

"I'll get those tests ordered," the doctor said, interrupting them. Mulder walked him out. 

"So, what's really going on?" he asked. 

"We'll know better tomorrow. Luckily, we've been able to get a medical history sent from her doctors in Canada. I'm having an oncologist on staff look at it right now." 

"An oncologist?" All the colour had drained out of Mulder's face. "Cancer?" 

"You didn't know? Yes, Mr. Mulder, your sister had cancer as a child. The oncologist will be able to tell you much more than I can." 

"And tonight?" 

"She's comfortable. Her vital signs are stronger. Until we know what we're dealing with, all we can do is keep an eye on her. She'll probably sleep through the night." 

When he returned to the room, Dana was in with Beth. 

"Tell your mom I'm sorry I fainted on her," Beth smiled, weakly. 

"It's not the first time it's happened. She had four kids. She's seen everything." Dana gave her hand a squeeze. "Don't worry about it." She glanced at Mulder. "I'll leave you alone." 

After she left, he asked, "Why didn't you tell me?" 

"We haven't exactly had much of a chance for the catch-up discussions, have we? I mean, ever since I got here, we've both just been rushing around, with one thing and another. It just caught up with me, that's all. I'm sure I'm fine." 

"The cancer�" 

"Is something I beat a long time ago. I can do it again. I'm strong." She smiled at him. "I never did tell you how I met my husband, did I?" He shook his head. "Jack and I met when we were sixteen, at a summer camp for kids with cancer. We couldn't have been more different�me, Little Orphan Annie, he�he had money, opportunities, and no hair," she laughed. "I had a little bout with leukemia, that was completely treatable. But nobody ever said it wouldn't come back." 

"They don't know that that's what it is." 

"Oh, they do. They all have the 'doctor' look on their faces. I got real good at reading that when I was a kid." She squeezed his hand. "Don't worry. Come here." He perched on the edge of her bed, gingerly. "I haven't even had a chance to say how glad I am that you're here, and okay. What happened?" 

He shook his head. "It's not important." 

"Oh, yeah, I forgot�you disappear all the time." 

"Occupational hazard," he shrugged. 

"Where's Alex?" 

"Outside." 

"Go home." 

"I'm not going to leave you." 

"Fox, I'm going to be here for a while. They're going to come in, take most of my blood, take my temperature, and generally poke and prod at me. In a couple of hours, probably tomorrow, they'll have a educated guess. Until then, there's nothing you can do except watch me sleep. Believe me, it's much less fascinating than it seems. Go home, hug your boyfriend�or whatever it is you do." She laughed, teasing. 

"If you're sure�" 

"I'm sure. It's all I can do to keep my eyes open now." She gave an exaggerated yawn. 

"I'll be back first thing in the morning." 

"I'll count the hours. Now go." 

He gave her a kiss and reluctantly left the room. 

"How is she?" Alex asked, as Mulder left the room. 

He shook his head. "She seems fine. I'm a wreck. It's cancer." 

Alex nodded. "Dana told me." He put an arm around Mulder's shoulders. "What can I do?" 

"Take me home and put me to bed." 

"Gladly. I've been waiting to do that for days." 

Alex didn't sleep at all that night, but, happily, it wasn't with worry. Although concerned about Beth, he couldn't focus on anything right at the moment except for the fact that his lover was there beside him, in his arms, in their bed. Safe. Alive. 

Mulder shifted against him. 

"You don't have to pretend you're asleep, you know." 

A sigh, and then Mulder moved to turn the bedside light on. 

"You want to go out on the couch?" Alex asked. 

A shrug. "I don't know." 

"You want to make love?" 

A smile. "Always." 

Alex kissed him. "Why don't you tell me what happened?" 

"When?" 

Alex raised an eyebrow. "Anytime." 

"You know, that couch thing is sounding better and better�" 

Alex's mouth cut him off. "Don't." 

"I don't understand any of it," Mulder said. "What happened to me, what's happening to Beth, Juda�" He shook his head. "None of it makes any sense." 

"So we figure it out." 

"As easy as that?" 

"I don't think the word 'easy' is one that should ever be included in our respective vocabularies," Alex said, ironically. 

"Oh, I don't know," Mulder smiled. "I've often found that the word coming into my mind when I'm thinking of you." 

Alex picked up a pillow, threatening him, but had to laugh. "Fine. I deserved that." 

"An admission that I'm truly grateful for, believe me." He slid his arms around Alex's waist. "I love you." 

"I know." Alex tightened his arms around Mulder for a minute, and added, "Don't go anywhere again, okay?" 

"Promise. The next time, I'll take my anti-knockout-drug pills, _before_ I leave the house." 

"I'm serious. I couldn't go through the last two days again. Your mother�" 

"My mother," Mulder groaned, cutting him off. "I didn't call her." 

"Dana did, when you were in with Beth." 

"Did she say anything?" 

"Nothing that Dana mentioned." 

"Damn." 

"You can't force her to care, Mulder." 

"I know that she cares. She's just afraid. I just don't know if she could handle losing her daughter again." 

"She didn't really handle it the first time," Alex pointed out. 

"When Samantha disappeared, I thought I wasn't enough for her," Mulder said. Alex stilled, surprised at the admission. "I knew it wasn't about that, but I felt like I was invisible to her, sometimes. She just shut down all of her feelings, so she couldn't be hurt by anything anymore. I don't know that my father didn't deserve that, somehow�" 

"But _you_ didn't," Alex said. "You were a kid." 

"Not for long. Or maybe I didn't ever really grow up at all." He shrugged. "I don't know." 

They were silent for a while. 

"Thank you for telling me that," Alex said. 

Mulder shrugged, again. When it was obvious that neither of them would be able to sleep anytime soon, Alex got out of the bed. He grabbed Mulder's hand and pulled him out, too. "Come on," he said, snagging one of the blankets. 

"Where�" Mulder started, then let himself be dragged along. 

Alex walked into the living room, lay down on the couch, and held his arms open. Mulder smiled at him, and lay down in front of him, laying his head on one crooked arm. Alex spread the blanket over them, and Mulder clicked the tv on. When he arrived at a truly terrible infomercial, he stilled his channel-surfing. 

He arched his neck, feeling Alex's mouth kissing it's way down...

When Walter and Dana arrived home, it was late, and both were exhausted.

"Are you hungry?" Walter asked. 

"Starving," Dana replied. They looked at each other for a moment, glanced at the kitchen, and she said, "Let's go to bed." 

He nodded, wrapping an arm around her. 

She started to undress as he went into the bathroom. It seemed to take a great deal of effort just to get her stockings off. She snagged a corner of them� _new ones, of course_ \- on the bandage on her finger, then sat stock-still as she realized what she'd done. 

Glancing at her watch, she realized that it was probably too late to call the lab. But her phone hadn't rung, and Diane said that she'd call when she knew anything, so�Grabbing her purse, she groaned when an inventory of it's contents revealed the lack of her cell phone. She vaguely remembered dropping it in the car on her way to the hospital that afternoon. 

"Dammit." 

The light on the answering machine was blinking, and she was almost afraid to switch it on. 

The first two were work, for Walter. The third was Alex. The fourth proved to be from Diane: 

"I didn't want to leave a message, but I knew you'd want to know, and I couldn't get a hold of you. There wasn't anything in the needle, Dana�from what I can tell, it was a new one." 

She let out a breath that she hadn't even realized she'd been holding, and sank down on the bed. 

"That was the lab?" Walter asked, coming out and sitting on the edge of the bed. 

Dana nodded. 

"Well?" 

She collapsed beside him. "Thank god," was all she said, then she burst into tears. 

When he awoke, he could feel Alex's still-steady breathing against the back of his neck. The infomercial had ended, and he was about to reach for the remote, when he realized what had replaced it: "War of the Worlds." 

He gave a laugh. The small movement was enough to wake Alex up, behind him. 

"What?" 

"Look," Mulder said, pointing at the tv. 

Alex had to laugh, too. "Do I finally get to see how it ends?" 

"That depends," Mulder grinned, turning carefully on the couch. 

"On�" 

"On whether you really want to watch the movie, or�" Mulder trailed off, kissing him. 

"Oh," Alex moaned. "Um�" 

"You have to _think_ about it?" 

"Well, it _has_ been a long time since I've seen this movie�" he teased, but it was cut off by a moan as Mulder started kissing his neck. "We could always rent it," he said, pulling his lover closer. 

"Uh-huh." 

"Let's go to bed." 

"We've never made love on this couch," Mulder said, wrapping his arms around Alex. 

"I know," Alex said, smiling. "Let's go to bed." 

"I want to have children." 

"Right now?" 

Dana smiled. "I'm serious," she admonished him, brushing her hair across his chest. "We've never really talked about it." 

"No," Walter agreed. "So, when?" 

"You want them?" 

"I want everything that we can possibly have together. Besides, I think we'd have some pretty cute kids�if they all turned out to look like their mother." 

"Well, if they're boys�" 

"Doesn't matter." He kissed her. "So, when _do_ you want to have them?" 

She thought for a while. "I can't think of a good reason to wait. I mean, anything could happen to either of us, at any time. I think today just proved that to me." She shifted. "I'm not doing this because I'm afraid of dying, but�" 

"But, there _isn't_ really a good reason not to start trying now." 

She smiled. "No." She closed her eyes, and felt his hands trailing up her back. "I love you. I want to have children with you. I want us to have a long life together, and not look back and regret that we didn't do something. Besides," she added ruefully, "I'm not getting any younger." 

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I hardly think you're pushing over the hill. You should be more concerned about me. I'm the one who's going to be chasing these kids around, a job suited for a much younger man." 

She kissed his strong chest. "I don't know many men who are in better shape than you are, older or younger. You'll do fine, believe me." 

"So, how many do you want?" 

"Could we start off with one?" 

"Oh," he teased, "you don't want to just have triplets, and get it over with?" 

She grimaced at him. "Don't joke�multiple births run in my family." 

"Really?" 

"Yes," she nodded. "I've got three sets of twin cousins, and one set of third-cousin triplets. So it's a definite possibility." 

He looked at her for a long minute. "What?" she prodded. 

"I'm just trying to imagine you pregnant," he said. "I can't picture it�you're so small." 

"Well, that will all change, believe me. Will you still love me when I've gained thirty pounds and am retaining water?" 

"I'll still love you when you've gained fifty pounds with our twins." She punched him, and he laughed. 

"I'm serious," she said. "If I end up having a multiple birth just because you insist on tempting fate�" 

"We're not going to have anything if we don't get some practice in," he said, and turned her on her side. He slid his hands down the curves of her body, making her shiver. "I love you." 

"I love you." 

The bedroom proved to be almost too far away, but they made it. Mulder pushed Alex down on his back, and straddled him, pushing his arms up over his head, pinning him down. He held Alex there with one hand grasping his wrists, and trailed the other down over his body. The touch was feather-light, and punctuated by kisses. Alex was biting his lip, trying not to give in to the teasingly light caresses, but the onslaught was rapidly breaking through his control. Mulder wouldn't let up until he was rewarded with a moan. 

"That's what I wanted to hear," he smiled, moving his mouth up to nibble Alex's ear. "Was that so hard?" 

Alex answered by arching his body up to contact with Mulder's. The proof of just how hard it was, indeed, met with his lover's erection. 

Mulder laughed, delighted. "Oh, well, okay, then." 

"Has anyone ever told you that you're an expert at torture? I think your true calling is being lost in the X-Files." 

"Oh?" 

"Uh-unh." Alex's words were getting shorter, as he struggled to catch his breath. "You should be interrogating guerrillas in some jungle."

"I hardly think they'd let me use these methods." 

"You never know�" He gave a push, and managed to get Mulder over on his side. "Ah�this is better." He moved his mouth closer to Mulder's, but his head turned at just the last second, and the kiss ended up catching his ear. "Tease," he whispered, giving the earlobe a nuzzle. 

"Takes one to know one." 

Alex burst out laughing. "That is the most juvenile thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth." 

"You're kidding me." 

"Nope," he shook his head. "You're usually so�so�" 

Mulder raised an eyebrow. "Serious?" 

"I was going more towards 'dour', but serious would do." 

"Dour?" 

Alex nodded, biting back his grin. 

"I'll show you dour�" He pushed Alex over again, in a mimic of their earlier position, and straddled him. The fingers once again brushed down his body, but this time the touch was surer. He started tickling Alex. 

"No, Mulder�Mulder, please, I apologize." 

"Say uncle." 

"Never." He yelped with laughter. "Mulder�" When the tickling didn't stop, he breathed�"uncle, uncle, uncle!" It still didn't stop. "Mulder!" 

"No, it's not good enough. You should have said it the first time. The penalty is going to be much worse, now." 

"Wh- what?" 

"You have to do whatever I want." 

"That's easy," Alex said, on the verge of hiccups. "I always do whatever you want." 

"Well, good." He finally stopped the onslaught. "Am I too controlling?" 

"Yes. You're controlling, and single-minded, and anal�" Mulder made a face "- and you fold your socks instead of rolling them�" 

"It's a wonder you haven't left me yet." 

"� _and_ beautiful, and loving, and silly, and I'm in love with you." Alex kissed him. "That, plus your exceptional taste in men, is why I fell in love with you." 

"Is that all?" 

"Well, you love me back, and that always helps." 

"It's the exceptional taste in men that you mentioned." Mulder licked at his neck. "Mmm, and you do taste very good." 

They lay there together, not moving, as Alex caught his breath. "Do you think we're ever going to take that vacation?" he asked. 

"Eventually. Things have to even out after a while. It's the law of averages." 

Alex rolled his eyes. "Please�'average' is another bad word for us."

"I guess so. How about we start planning now?" 

"But Beth, and the investigation." Alex groaned. "Not to mention what InSec is going to�" 

Mulder's mouth cut him off. "We plan it out, get an itinerary, pack a bag, and the first sight of anything even remotely resembling normality, we get the hell out of here. Okay?" 

"Okay." Alex's eyes followed the path of his hand as it trailed down Mulder's chest. "What is it that you wanted me to do for my punishment?"

"I think you've come up with a pretty good idea on your own." 

"Do you have any preference for names?" 

"Are you that sure that it worked already?" Dana laughed. 

Walter smiled. "Well, you never know." 

She thought for a moment. "What were your parents' names?" 

"Hillary and Thomas." 

"Hmm. That's not bad�Thomas Skinner. It has a ring to it." 

"What about your parents?" 

"I don't know�for middle names, maybe. My mother's still alive, and my brother's named for my father." 

"Katherine's always good." 

She scrunched up her nose. "Every Irish-Catholic family has at least one Katherine." 

"Why buck tradition?"

"How about something completely new? Give this kid a chance to forge his�or her�own path." 

"I always liked Emily."

"Let me guess�you dated an Emily." 

He chuckled. "She was my girlfriend in third grade. She used to bring me cupcakes for lunch. They were terrible." 

"I bet you ate every one." 

"Of course. I was four feet nothing, and she was bigger and heavier than me. My mother didn't raise no fools." 

She laughed. "Always the gentlemen." 

"Maria?" 

She shook her head. "My roommate in college. She stole my boyfriend." 

"Helen?" 

"Too blonde."

"Okay, you suggest." 

She lay back and thought, wrinkling her forehead. "Brian?" 

"Lawyer." 

"Steven?" 

" _Way_ too blonde." 

She smiled. "I give up." 

He twined their fingers together. "I know it's not strictly new, but how about Melissa?" he asked, softly. 

Her smile faded a little, and she closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, she looked serene. "I think that's a beautiful idea." She ran their still-joined hands down across her stomach. "Melissa Skinner. It even sounds good together." 

He nodded, kissing the top of her head. "I don't know if you're in there yet, Melissa, but your mom and I are anxious to meet you." 

"Maybe we should try it again�just to make sure it worked?" She slid in a bit closer to her husband. 

"Oh, by all means," he agreed, and pulled her mouth up to meet his.

Alex moved his mouth down Mulder's chest, then up again, capturing that beautiful mouth with his own, as his hands continued their exploration, by feel alone. He found the erection pressed up urgently against Mulder's stomach, and wrapped his hands around it, stroking lightly. Small moans sounded from deep in Mulder's throat, even as their mouths were still exploring each other. 

The gentle stroking continued, unabated, as he brought his lover closer to climax. His own body was on fire, as Mulder pulled him closer, hands at the small of his back, bringing their bodies into contact, crushing his own hands in between. He opened his eyes to stare into deep hazel, searching for what, he couldn't say. 

Mulder smiled. "I love your eyes," he said, kissing Alex's cheeks just below them. "They're so beautiful. I used to stare at your eyes when I thought you weren't looking." 

"I know," Alex said, softly. He turned easily onto his side, keeping Mulder's arms around him. "I want you," he said, "just like this, always." 

They rubbed up against each other, giving each other deep, languid kisses, feeling the brush of skin against skin, the hardness of nipples and cocks, the soft tickle of hair, the gentle slide of slick skin, each movement catalogued for an eternity, and remembered and passed on and re-experienced. 

They moved easily towards the edge, eyes still open, hands still moving against each other. "I _need_ you," Alex breathed, and Mulder groaned, feeling himself coming, and then watching his lover come, their bodies thrusting together, moving scant millimeters apart, staring into the deep green as they came and came and collapsed together, alone, in love. 

The opening of the hospital door woke Beth out of a light sleep. "Don't tell me you've come for more blood," she groaned. "I don't have any left to give." She blinked her eyes open, and stared at the woman standing in front of her. 

"I wanted to see how you were." 

"I�I'm okay," Beth said. "I didn't think they let visitors in yet."

"I told the nurse that I was your mother," Sarah said. "They made an exception. I can leave, if you want�" 

"No. Please, it's okay." She gestured to the chair beside the bed. "Sit down." 

There was awkward silence for a moment, then Sarah said, "Fox is all right?" 

Beth nodded. "Yeah. I guess Dana called you." 

"Yes. She told me�about everything. I would have called him myself, but I didn't know if he wanted to hear from me." 

"I'm sure he does." 

"Well," Sarah smiled, "it's early, still." 

Beth nodded, and they lapsed into silence again. 

"I shouldn't have come so early," Sarah apologized. "I didn't intend to wake you, I just wanted to see for myself that you were all right." She paused. "But you aren't, are you?" 

Something broke in Beth's control. She started to cry. Her mother perched on the edge of her bed, and took her daughter into her arms.

"No," Beth agreed, letting the tears come. "I'm not." 

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	3. Three

 

Three

  
**Three  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
He shifted in the chair. Waiting in Skinner's office _still_ made him feel as if he were a naughty thirteen-year-old waiting to talk to the principal. _The pictures were Johnny's, honest,_ he thought to himself. _I didn't even look at them._

The door opened, and he automatically sat up straighter. Reflex. 

"Agent Mulder," Skinner said, sitting down behind his desk. "You'll be happy to know that you're not going to jail." 

"And a good morning to you, too, sir," Mulder said. 

Skinner glared at him, but it, too, was an automatic response to Mulder's mouth. The look behind the glasses wasn't terribly angry. As a matter of fact, he seemed a little�happy, Mulder thought. "InSec's report is going to be handed down this afternoon. Apparently they've had second thoughts about implicating you in the murder of Juda Zawarska."

Mulder raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know they cared." 

"It seems that there were some allegations made about planted evidence."

"Involving who?"

"A junior-level agent. He's been disciplined and re-assigned." 

"Of course." 

"I believe that Agent Thomas has been careful to distance himself from the entire matter." He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "This is no way to start a Monday morning." Picking up a case file, he slid it across the desk. "This is your new assignment. You and your new partner will be flying out to Chicago later today�" 

"My new partner?" Mulder asked, startled. "Since when am I getting a new partner?" 

"Since this morning. He should be here by now." As if on cue, the intercom buzzed. "Send him in, Kimberly," Walter said. 

Mulder turned at the sound of the door, and found himself looking at the smirking face of Alex Krycek. 

"What the hell�" 

"Didn't I tell you?" Alex smiled. "I was reinstated." 

Mulder was staring at him, his mouth open. 

"How else am I going to make sure you get home in one piece?" 

Skinner was quick to respond to Alex's smile. "The first sign of fraternization on the job, gentlemen, and I'm hauling the both of you out of the field and into permanent wire-tap duty. Understood?" 

"Yes, sir," Alex said, his smile only slightly tempered. 

Mulder could only nod. 

"Good." He handed the file to Alex. "Agent Krycek, take the case file and your partner and get to work." 

"Yes, sir," Alex said again. "Coming, Mulder?" There was a hint of amusement in his eyes. 

"Scully."

"Hey, Dana. You up for an early lunch?" 

She glanced at her watch. "Sure, Beth. Where and when?" 

"How about Molloy's at eleven?" 

"Great. I'll meet you there." 

Dana clicked the receiver, then dialled the direct number to her husband's office. 

"Skinner."

"Hi. What are you wearing?"

"How do you know that I'm not in a meeting?" 

"I'd hoped that you were," Dana laughed. "I check your book every morning before you leave. I know what you do better than I know what _I_ do." 

"You're unbelievable."

"Uh-huh. Flattery will get you everywhere. Look, Beth called and asked me to lunch, so I have to cancel our date." 

"Better you than me." 

She groaned. "Not _another_ meeting. They're working you too hard."

"One doesn't get to be Director overnight, you know." 

"Don't even joke about that." 

He laughed. "Don't worry. Are we still on for dinner?" 

"I don't know. What's the schedule look like?" 

He checked his calendar. "I believe I should be out of here sometime in mid-December." 

"Tell you what�I'll come in at six and personally rescue you from whatever boring meeting you're suffering through." 

"My hero."

"That's me�Sharp-eye Scully, they called me at the Academy." 

"I thought they called you�" 

"Walter!" 

"Must have been somebody else," he said, hurriedly. "I'll see you at six. I love you." 

"Nice save," she said. "I love you, too." 

"Where the hell did you get that tie?" 

"It's one of yours," Alex replied, grinning. He threw his overcoat on the back of the chair that used to be Scully's, and looked critically at the garish red and purple striped tie. "Oh, come on, Mulder. It's not that bad. It was the least obnoxious one I could find in the closet." 

"Has anyone ever told you you'd make a really good spy?" Mulder shook his head. "How long have you and Skinner been planning this?" 

Alex shrugged. "We worked together on your disappearance, and he helped me out when I was being interrogated by Thomas about the Juda thing. We talked in the hospital the first night Beth was in, and a couple of times since then. He told me that the job was mine if I wanted it." 

"But they offered it to you when the whole Consortium deal first blew open, and you said you didn't want it." 

"I didn't, then," Alex said, leaning against the desk. "But I've had some time to think. I don't like the idea that you don't have anyone to watch your back, and knowing your predilection for falling in love with your partners�" 

"Hey!" Mulder protested. 

"It's true. I'm just protecting myself. God knows who Skinner would have set you up with the next time. With my luck, Cindy Crawford would have been the first supermodel FBI agent." 

Mulder shook his head. "I'm not that bad." 

"True," Alex said. "Look, if you hate the idea of me working here�" 

"I don't."

"Good," he smiled. "I'm sorry I didn't discuss it with you, but I wanted it to be a surprise. And, it worked out well with the whole 'no discussing work at home' thing." He wrapped his arms around Mulder's neck. "Forgive me?" he asked, nuzzling softly. 

"Have you forgotten about the no-fraternization rule?" 

"So I guess christening my first day back on the job with a quickie is out of the question, right?" 

Mulder groaned. "How am I supposed to work with you here looking so�so�" He paused, narrowing his eyes. "Did you cut your hair?" 

"Only a little." 

He shook his head. "The suit, the haircut. I'm having deja vu to three years ago." 

"Only this time, you know you can trust me." 

"It's not _you_ I'm worried about." He looked around the office, and groaned again. "Did they have to return _everything_ today? I was looking forward to having a clean office for one day." 

Alex started pulling open some the dozen of boxes that were strewn in the small room. "We'd better start putting this stuff away. It's not going to get any better than this. When's our flight?" 

Mulder checked the case file. "Noon." He paused. "Does this mean we can't have phone sex anymore?" 

"Are you telling me you like phone sex with me better than the real thing?" Alex looked amazed. 

Mulder turned and hurriedly started shuffling through boxes. Alex, trying to hide his grin, turned him around and looked sternly into his partner's eyes. "It's true! You get off on the phone, don't you? No wonder you had a panic attack the last time your cell phone batteries ran down." 

"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer," Mulder said, turning back to his desk and digging through the box. 

Alex just shook his head. "And here I thought it was _me_ that was turning you on," he muttered. He then pulled a small round object out of the box he was going through. "Mulder, what is this?" 

Mulder glanced up. "A moon rock." 

Alex raised an eyebrow. 

"It was a gift," Mulder said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

"So what have you been doing?" Dana Scully sipped her water, and regarded her lunch companion across the table. 

"Wig shopping." Beth Locke grinned back at her. "I'm thinking of going blonde." 

Dana shook her head at her friend. "You don't know that you're going to lose your hair." 

"I did the last time, and I wasn't allowed to have a wig. The nuns thought that it reflected vanity on my part. I had so many scarves, you wouldn't believe it." She scanned the lunch menu. "I'm starving."

"I've never seen you look healthier." 

"Yeah, I'm in the middle of the treatment cycle. I'll be puking my guts out by this time next week, I'm sure, so I have to eat now while I still want to." 

"I remember." 

Beth glanced up at her. "I hope my talking about this doesn't bring up any bad memories for you." 

Dana shook her head. "No. We're survivors. And it's probably your attitude more than anything that's going to keep you alive." 

"Good. Keeping it all inside would drive me nuts, but it's not the sort of thing that I can talk to Fox about�he's in denial when it comes to me. I mention the big 'C' and I can see him age right in front of me." She put the menu down. "So, what's going on with you?" 

"Walter and I have decided to try to have a baby." 

"Dana!" Beth's eyes lit up. "That's wonderful." 

"Yeah, it's been fun so far," Dana laughed. "Walter's very _enthusiastic_ about the idea. And we're having fun practicing." 

"What does your mother think of the idea?" 

"Are you kidding? She was more excited than I am. It's all that she's ever wanted�for me to be married, and a mother. If I quit my job, she'd be in heaven."

"Are you going to?" 

Dana shook her head. "No�at least not right away. I'm going to try to juggle the working-mother thing, and see how it works out. I _need_ my job, right now. And the teaching is going well. I've got some really promising students." 

"Do you miss the X-Files?" 

"Sometimes. I miss working with your brother, I guess. Except when he was ditching me, of course," she laughed. "We did good work together, but I don't think I could go back to it." 

"Alex started back to work today." 

"I know," she nodded. "I hope it works out for them. It can be hard to work with someone you're in love with. The X-Files aren't exactly low-stress."

"I think Alex was under more stress worrying about Fox when he _didn't_ know what was going on," Beth said. "I hope this way is better, for both of them. And who knows�maybe he'll be able to reign Fox in a little." They both looked at each other for an instant, and said, as one, "Nah." They both started to laugh. 

An internal messenger arrived about thirty minutes after they came back to the office, bringing with him the last of the boxes of files that InSec had confiscated from the X-Files. Mulder and Alex were still going through the ones that were there, trying to re-arrange the files into at least the semblance of disorder that they'd been in before, when a cell phone rang. Mulder instinctively reached for his, only to find that there was no one there. Alex got his coat jacket and pulled his own cell out. 

"Hello?"

"Alex. You're a very difficult man to get a hold of." 

Alex paused a moment before he placed the voice. "Did you find out something?" He glanced significantly over to Mulder, who came over and listened in beside him. 

"Maybe. Can you meet me?" 

"I'm leaving for the airport in two hours." 

"Great. Meet me in the duty-free shop." The line clicked off. 

"Who was that?" Mulder asked, shutting the file drawer. 

"An old associate of mine," Alex said. "Sergei Markov. I asked him to get me some information on Juda when you were gone."

"And he has something?" 

"So he says. I'm going to keep the meeting, if we have time." 

"We should. Do you trust him?" 

"No. But he might have some information. It's the only thing I've been able to come up with." 

"If he can tell me who either of those men were, I'll be happy." 

"Well, there's always hope." 

"Have you talked with your mother, lately?" 

Beth sighed. "On the phone. I'm afraid to rush her with anything. I just got out of the hospital, and�" She shrugged. "I don't know if it was just stress over the thought that she might lose me that brought her to see me, or what." 

"Maybe you should give her a chance." 

"I want to. I'm just a little gun-shy, I guess. I don't want to get my hopes up."

"I think she wants to try again with you, Beth. You're her daughter." 

Beth smiled. "She actually said I was, in the hospital. She'd never said that before." She looked thoughtful. "I suppose I don't really have anything to lose, do I?" 

"And you have an awful lot to gain." 

"I guess I just wish she was more like your mother." 

"My mother is not perfect," Dana pointed out. 

"Nobody is," Beth agreed, "but I'm sure you've never questioned whether or not she loves you. Or any of her children, for that matter." 

"No, that I never did. If I can give that to my child, that will be a lot." 

"More than you know," Beth smiled. "More than anything else." They left the office at eleven, to get a jump on the traffic to the airport. The place was still a disaster area�even more so, now that they'd started putting things back together they way they'd been before.

"Well, looking on the bright side," Alex said, "if anyone breaks in, they'll never be able to find anything." 

"If anyone breaks in, we'll never be able to tell. They'll probably trip and drown in a wave of paperwork." Mulder put on his coat. "We'd better get going." 

"Did you ever think of requisitioning a secretary from Skinner?" 

Mulder gave him a look of complete disbelief. "Are you kidding me? I can barely get him to sign off on the expense report." 

"Maybe we could kidnap Kimberly?" 

"Can't," Mulder said, shaking his head. "She doesn't like me." 

"Why ever not? I didn't think there was a female alive capable of resisting the Mulder charm." 

"I'm not sure. Scully said something cryptic to me about the Christmas party a couple of years ago. I've never been able to get the full story out of her." 

"Don't tell me you hit on her, too?" Alex rolled his eyes. "Can't you turn it off?" 

Mulder grinned. "It's genetic. I have no control." 

"The hell you don't!" 

"Alex�" 

"What?" 

"We're going to miss our plane." He opened the door, and handed Alex his coat, ushering him out. 

Walter was in his office, leaning back in his chair, trying to massage away a little of the stress of the day. _Stress of the day,_ he thought. _It's only eleven-thirty._

The intercom buzz brought him out of his reverie. 

"Yes, Kimberly?"

"Agent Thomas to see you, sir." 

"Does he have an appointment?" 

"No, sir." 

"Then tell him I'll see him when he makes one!" he said sharply, and cut the connection. _Let him cool _his_ heels for a while._

Ten minutes later, he picked up a sheaf of files and left for his lunch meeting in another part of the building. He was surprised to see Agent Thomas still in his outer office. 

"I need to speak with you," he said. 

"I'm sure Kimberly will be able to set up an appointment for you, Agent," Walter replied shortly, walking past him. 

Thomas caught up with him halfway down the hall. "I really think you want to talk to me, Skinner. It concerns one of your 'pet' agents." 

Walter turned sharply. "I don't have any 'pet' agents, Agent Thomas. If you have something to say, I suggest you say it, rather than making coy double-talk. I've had about enough of that from you."

He was pleased to see the smaller man cower slightly. _Afraid I'm going to hit you again?_ he thought. _That's not a bad idea._ He started walking again. 

"Agent Mulder is in trouble." 

That stopped him short. He turned and regarded the other man. "Agent Mulder is on a plane for Chicago." 

Thomas checked his watch. "Not for another twenty-three minutes. In the meantime, I have good reason to believe that he will be dead before he reaches the airplane." 

"Why are you telling me this?" 

"I'm getting out. They tried to pin the Zawarska fiasco on me, but I outsmarted them." 

"And got another agent implicated." 

"And what did they do to him?" Thomas laughed. "Gave him a desk job. He doesn't even know why�he probably thinks it's a promotion." 

"Who's 'they'?" 

Thomas shook his head. "Don't ask questions that you don't want the answers to, Skinner. Find your agent. Maybe you can stop them from killing him."

Before Walter could say anything else, Thomas turned and disappeared down the hall. 

"He's not going to show. The flight will be boarding soon." 

"Give him a few minutes, Mulder," Alex said, watching his partner pace. "Maybe he can't make it. Why don't you call and get our messages, and I'll wait here?" 

Mulder nodded, and walked to a bank of pay phones across the corridor from the shop. He picked a phone that afforded him a clear view of Alex, pulled out a phone card and dialled the number of their apartment, listening as the messages ran through. _Nothing,_ he thought, and was about to hang up, when a phone rang. His cell. 

"Mulder." 

It was Skinner. "Agent Mulder, listen to me carefully�where are you?"

"The airport."

"Okay�I want you to get your partner and get out of there right now. I have good reason to believe that you're being set up�" 

Mulder didn't hear anything else. He dropped the phone and ran back towards the duty-free shop. It wasn't that far away, but it seemed to be taking him an inordinate amount of time to cross the small amount of space. 

As he was moving through the crowd of people, he scanned the crowd, and spotted one man moving with deathly precision towards the spot where Alex was standing. Like a slow-motion movie, he saw the man pull a gun out of his pocket, and take aim. 

"Alex!" He shouted out the name, hoping to be heard over the din of the p.a. system, the crowds, and the noise of the airplanes. "It's a set-up! Get down!" 

Too late, he realized that Alex hadn't heard him. He pulled the service revolver out of his holster, and rushed over to catch up to his partner. Alex turned towards him, smiling and shaking his head. "Get down!" Mulder screamed. 

Mulder saw the flare of the gunshots before he heard anything. There were a few horrified screams from behind the ticket counter, and he and someone from airport security tackled the shooter. The entire thing had taken less than thirty seconds. 

He turned to see Alex, crumpled to the floor. 

"No!" 

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	4. Four

 

Four

  
**Four  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
The entire thing had taken seconds. He untangled himself from the suspect, throwing his handcuffs at the airport security guy and rushing to the side of his fallen partner. 

"Alex? God, Alex," he put a hand to his throat, to check his pulse, as Alex's eyes flew open. Mulder grinned in relief for a second, then started checking him frantically. "Don't move," he said, in warning, looking him over. 

"Don't worry." 

"I swear, the moment you get out of the hospital, I'm taking you straight to Quantico for a refresher course in ducking." 

"Oh, I don't know," Alex said, with a shaky grin, attempting to raise his arms. "I'd say I'm pretty good at it." 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean, unless my entire body has gone numb, that he missed me." He pulled himself up, giving himself a visual once-over. "Yup." 

Mulder sagged beside him. "He missed you." 

"You sound almost disappointed." 

"If we weren't in public, I'd rip off all of your clothes and show you just how incredibly not disappointed I am. Unfortunately�" 

"Can I take that as a raincheck?" Alex grinned at him. He got up and reached a hand down for his partner, then turned towards the now-handcuffed shooter. "Recognize him?" 

Mulder gave the guy the once-over. "Well, well, well�what do you know? I believe this is the guy who made you a widower." 

"Sandro Mirstov, if I'm not mistaken." 

"An old friend of yours?" Mulder asked. 

"More like an acquaintance," Alex answered. "I'm disappointed, Mirstov," he said to the still-struggling man. "You should know better than to shoot someone without your glasses on." 

The man shot him a nasty-sounding epithet in Russian. "I got contacts," he growled, in English this time. 

Mulder almost laughed. "Never trust those one-hour eye places," he said, flippantly. "They'll screw you over, or hadn't you heard?" He waved over the backup agents that he saw Skinner had sent arrive. "Take him away." 

Alex checked his watch. "We missed our flight." 

Mulder glanced over. "Too bad." 

"Should we book another one?" 

"I think, under the circumstances, we should probably skip the trip to Chicago." He pulled out his cell phone. "I'd better call in and let Skinner know we're both alive." 

"Say hi from me." 

Mirstov was taken to a tiny room at the airport normally reserved for customs. Alex and Mulder walked in to find him with two other agents already.

"You know this guy?" one of them asked. 

"Sandro Mirstov," Mulder said. 

"AKA Sandy Martin," another voice said, coming through the door. He held his hand out, "Agent Morris, Central Intelligence." 

Mulder groaned internally, but held his hand out. "Agent Mulder. Why are you here?" 

"I've been tracking Mr. Mirstov for three months now." 

"Why?" Alex asked. 

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you that, Agent Krycek." 

Alex's eyebrow raised at the use of his name, but Morris just smiled, benignly. He pulled some paperwork out of the file in his hand. "I'm going to have to take Mr. Mirstov with me, I'm afraid." 

"I think the Alexandria police are probably going to be interested in 'Mr.' Mirstov in connection with an on-going murder investigation," Mulder said. 

"Oh, I'll be able to clear that matter up, believe me." He signalled for two other agents to come in, and handed Mulder's handcuffs back to him. "I can assure you, Mr. Mirstov won't be causing any trouble in this country ever again." 

"So he gets a one-way ticket back home, eh?" Alex smiled bitterly. "First class?" 

"I'll say hi to your family for you, Alexei," Mirstov said, smugly. 

"You son-of-a�" 

Mulder put an arm up to hold him back. "Alex�it's not worth it. Let's get out of here." 

"Hi, Dr. Miller, hi, Doris." Beth waved to her oncologist, and the attending nurse at the desk. "Ready for me?" 

Doris shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Beth. The last two appointments were pushed back this afternoon. It's going to be forty-five minutes, at least, before we can take you." 

Beth rolled her eyes. "Why am I never surprised?" She rummaged around in her bag for her hospital card. "Here. Let's do the next hundred pages of my paperwork while I wait, okay?" She took the clipboard of papers over to a chair and started filling them out.

Despite the impressive size of the pile of paperwork, she was familiar enough with the routine to have them all finished inside of ten minutes. She checked her watch. "Do you think they could use any help in the playroom?" she asked Doris. 

"I think they'd be very glad for it," Doris replied. "I can call down there when we can take you, if you'd like." 

"That would be great," Beth said, with a smile. "I'll see you in a few." 

They got back to the disaster area of their office within the hour. Mulder took one look at his partner, rumpled suit and all, and locked the door. 

"Mulder�" Alex started, still upset about the Mirstov business, but his thought was cut off by his partner's mouth. 

Mulder kissed him thoroughly, then started taking his jacket off. 

"Uh, did you forget about the 'no fraternization' rule?" 

Mulder shook his head. "I also remember the 'i before e except after c' rule, but I don't care about that now, either." He kissed Alex again, unbuttoning his shirt. "You could have been killed." 

"But I wasn't." 

"Thank god. And I think that we should celebrate that fact." He attached his mouth to Alex's throat. 

"Oh, yeah, sounds good," Alex moaned. "The only thing is, there isn't a whole lot of room in the office, right at the moment." His eyes widened as Mulder swept his arm broadly, pushing everything off of the second desk and onto the already-crowded floor, then grinned at him, yanking off his tie. "You couldn't have done that to _your_ desk?" 

"Sorry," he said, not sounding in the least sorry. He pushed Alex back onto the desk. "Heat of the moment." 

"Do near-death experiences always have this effect on you?" 

"Haven't you known me long enough to figure that out, yet?" He continued kissing and undressing his partner. "This would go a lot faster if you helped, you know." 

"And what makes you think I have any interest in this going any faster?" 

Mulder grinned. "Good point. But the entire concept of a 'quickie', by it's very name, implies some sort of speed of execution." 

"True. We'll have to call this something else, then." 

"It can't be a 'nooner'," Mulder said, glancing at his watch and stripping his pants off. "It's nearly two." 

"A 'twoer'?" Alex suggested, curling his tongue around Mulder's ear. 

"Oh, I like that," Mulder moaned, "but the name is terrible." 

"How about," Alex said, turning them over on the desk, "a 'long, slow, hard fuck'?" 

"Now that is a fantastic idea," Mulder agreed. "But what are we going to call it?" 

Beth left the playroom and thrust her hand in her purse, looking for her wallet. The more-precious-than-gold hospital parking tokens she kept were in there, and she wanted to know if she had any left, or if she had to buy more. A momentary panic swept over her as she realized her wallet wasn't there. 

"Oh, hell." She tried to think of where she'd seen it last. "Maybe it fell out in the car." 

She checked her watch. Still seven minutes to go before her appointment. Enough time to make a dash for the car. 

She continued to poke through the bag on the elevator, and walking through the parking garage, pulling books, planners, pill bottles and other assorted items out of the seemingly-bottomless bag. She made it to the car and got the door open when a voice directly behind her startled her into whirling around. 

"Can I help?" 

She reached blindly to drop her bag into the car, but miscalculated and missed, dumping it and the contents onto the floor of the garage, where they scattered. 

"Dammit," she swore. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Please, let me help," the man said with a smile, bending down towards her, and gathering some of the stuff together. 

She smiled her thanks and turned slightly away to reach for her paperback. Just as she turned back to put it into her bag, a hand came over her mouth, hard. She tried to struggle, kicking out, but he was too strong for her, and she could only watch helplessly as he produced a syringe. A second later she felt the sharp prick of an injection, and everything went black. 

At three-fifteen, they were in Skinner's office again giving their report of the events of the morning. Skinner had already been well briefed on the situation through a few calls to their brother agency, none of which had led to any better news than Morris had already given them. 

"So we're just going to let him go?" Alex asked. "He could have killed a federal agent. He _did_ kill someone, for god's sake, and�" 

Mulder's cell phone rang. He looked away apologetically before he answered it. 

"Agent Mulder," the voice said, continuing on before he could reply, "the ones you hold near. You should be very careful of them." 

Startled, he was unable to say anything before the line clicked dead. He shot a look at Alex beside him, then dialled the number of Scully's cell phone. 

"Scully." 

"Are you okay?" 

"Mulder? Yeah, I'm fine. What's wrong?" 

"Oh, nothing. Just the usual day�I'm fine, your husband's fine, Alex was shot at�" 

"What?" 

"He's fine, too. Look, I've got to try to find Beth. Do you know where she's supposed to be today?" 

"She's probably in the middle of her radiation appointment," Dana said. "She told me she had an appointment at three when I saw her this morning." 

"Great. I hate to cut you off, but I've got to call my mom." 

"Is anything wrong?" 

"I don't know. I'll call you if something is." 

"Okay." 

He dialled his mother's place. Both Alex and Skinner were looking at him with concern. "Mom? Are you okay?" 

He talked with his mother for a few minutes, then made a call to the hospital. 

"Radiation." 

"Is Beth Locke there for her appointment? This is her brother, Fox Mulder." 

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mulder. Her appointment was pushed back, and she's not going in for another fifteen minutes." 

"Could I talk with her?" 

"She's not right here�she went down to the pediatric playroom. I could have her call you when she comes back." 

"Uh, I realize this is unusual, but could you possibly have her paged? This is an emergency." 

"Of course. I'll call down there right now." She put him on hold. 

"What's going on?" Alex asked. 

"'The ones you hold near. You should be very careful of them,'" Mulder quoted, holding the cell away from his mouth. "That was the call I got. A male voice, no background noises." 

"I'll put a trace on it," Skinner said, picking up the phone. 

"The entire thing couldn't have taken more than ten seconds," Mulder said, shaking his head. "I'd call it a prank, but my name was used. And, until I hear from everyone I 'hold near', I'm not taking any chances. Yes," he said, his ear back to the phone. All expression drained from his face as he listened. "She's not there? Can you repeat the page over the entire hospital?" 

Skinner picked up the phone. "I need an investigative team to Mercy General," he said. 

Her car was in the underground garage, the driver's side door open. Five feet away from the car was a shoe that Dana later recognized as one of a pair that she'd been wearing that morning. There were also, they would find out from the forensic report on the car, a few drops of blood found that matched her blood type. 

Alex was keeping a worried eye on Mulder, who was barely controlling his frustration, going over the crime scene, and generally getting in the way of the team that was trying to collect evidence. Finally, he went over to him. 

"Mulder�" 

"This is my fault." 

"How do you figure that?" 

"I should have�" he trailed off, at a loss. 

"Exactly," Alex said. "You can't keep her in sight twenty-four hours a day. She'd probably kill you inside of a week. No matter what you think, you're not responsible for the lives of all of the people around you." He put a hand on Mulder's arm and tugged him away from the car. "Let them do their job, Mulder." 

"I need to _do_ something." 

"Let's go talk to the witnesses they've rounded up. Maybe they've found out something." 

They met Dana as they rounded the corner towards the nurses' lounge where the two witnesses, an orderly who'd found the car and called the police, and an off-duty nurse who'd nearly been run down by a sedan leaving the garage at the approximate time of the abduction, were being questioned. 

"It was dark blue, not very good condition, I think. The windows were tinted, so I didn't get a look at the driver." 

"License plate?" 

She shook her head. "I was too busy trying to get out of the way to notice. I'm sorry." 

"Do you remember anything else?" Mulder put in, drawing an annoyed glance from the officer in charge. "Either of you? Anything could be significant, even if you don't think it is." 

They both thought for a moment, but shook their heads. The nurse piped up again, "It just happened so fast, I'm surprised that I even managed to see what colour the car was." 

They both left their names and contact numbers with the officer, and left the room. 

"Mulder family characteristic," Mulder muttered. 

"What?" Alex asked. 

He shook his head. "Just remembering something Beth said in the hospital. I think too many damn things run in our family," he said, and headed out the door, Alex at his heels. 

She woke up and tried opening her eyes, but it didn't help her any. At first she had a hysterical thought that the radiation had made her go blind, before she remembered she'd never made it to her appointment. She tried to think of why she'd missed it, but her head ached terribly, along with most of the rest of her body, and made it impossible for her to gather her thoughts. 

_Okay, you're not in Kansas anymore. So where are you?_ Obviously, she'd been taken somewhere. She shivered. Wherever this was was extremely cold, and damp. A musty smell joined and made her think of a basement somewhere. That would explain the hardness of whatever she was lying on�concrete. 

Shifting gingerly, she attempted to sit up. It took Herculean effort, as her hands and ankles were bound securely with wide tape. Finally, she stopped trying. _What the hell am I going to be able to do sitting up that I can't do lying here?_

A sudden noise startled her, and she tried to settle quickly into the position she'd been in when she awoke, steadying her breathing to make it seem as though she were still unconscious. 

Footsteps fell closer, and she was nudged with something she assumed to be a foot. She didn't respond. 

A male voice said, "I thought you said she'd be awake by now." 

"Maybe she's taking some other drugs that reacted with the mickey. She was in the hospital, you know." The second voice startled her further�she had only heard one set of footsteps approaching. 

"Great. So what if she's in a coma? If she dies, she isn't going to be any good to us at all." 

_Good to know that if I die, it won't only screw up _my_ day._

"If she dies, she dies. As long as we get paid before they find out she's dead, everything will turn out fine. You worry too much." 

"The boss will not be impressed with either one of us if the plan doesn't go exactly as he wants it to. If she dies, we could very well follow."

_It might be worth it, at that._

"Oh, shut up. She hasn't even been out for two hours, yet. Give her some time. Maybe we just gave her more than she needed." 

"We? I don't remember handling the stuff at all, Einstein." 

"Buddy, for the last time�if this screws up, we both go down. Throw a blanket on her, so she won't freeze to death, at least." 

A musty, damp blanket was thrown unceremoniously on top of her, but she was glad for any extra warmth. She held her breath as she heard them climb upstairs, then a door was slammed. Waiting a few extra minutes, she strained to hear anything else, then finally let her breath out with a gasp. Shifting around to get under more of the blanket, she struggled to gather her thoughts, but eventually the pain and coldness overcame her and she succumbed once again to sleep. 

They were tirelessly going through the case files, staying in the office late into the night. Finally Alex looked up from the box he was going through. Mulder had put his head down on the desk for a moment, in despair. 

"Mulder," Alex said. He didn't move his head. "She's going to be okay, Mulder." 

"I don't know that. Neither do you. We don't even know who the hell has her."

"We'll figure it out, but you have to get some rest." 

"I can't. Not until we find her." He sat up and rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses sat, polishing them and putting them back on. "You can go home, if you want." 

"No." He came over beside his partner. "I love her, too." 

Mulder nodded, wordlessly. 

"I just know that we _aren't_ going to find her if you worry yourself into the hospital." 

Mulder sighed. "I can't lose her again. I just got her back." He crumpled against the desk. "I can't, Alex." 

Alex put an arm around his shoulders. "I know," he said, soothingly. "We'll find her." 

Mulder banged his hand against the desk. " 'The ones you hold near,'" he said, for the hundredth time that day. "Dammit! If I could just remember why that sounds so familiar." 

Alex started rustling through the files again. "It wasn't a case that you worked on? In VC, maybe?" 

"No," Mulder shook his head. "That I would remember for sure. It's something else, something more insidious." 

"Obsessing is not going to help. We should go home, get some rest�" 

"He's right, you know." 

They both looked up to see Dana standing in the doorway. 

"What are you doing here?" 

"I thought you'd both still be here. I also ran through some of the reports on Beth's car. They're getting really friendly with me down there. I may get my own parking spot soon." 

"Nice to know you have a career in law enforcement to fall back on," Mulder said, dryly. "Did they have anything?" 

"The usual�clothing fibers, hair. They're being analyzed, to see if they're all Beth's, or if there's something from the abductor. And this." She held out a evidence bag, with a syringe in it. "I brought it here for Diane to look at." 

"Do you think it's the same as the one you found in Mulder's car?" Alex asked. 

"It may be impossible to tell. The other one didn't have anything in it, but this one shows some obvious signs of use. We may be able to find out what they used to knock her out, though." 

Mulder was sitting silently, staring at his hands. Finally, he looked up. "Of course," he said, "it wasn't the words!" 

"What do you mean?" 

"What was so familiar about the phone call. I was trying to remember where I'd heard the words before, but it wasn't the words, it was the _voice_." 

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	5. Five

 

Five

  
**Five  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
"Samantha." The voice was soft, as if attempting to wake her without really trying. "Samantha." 

"Hello? Who's there?" Her voice came out as a dry croak. She moaned, her head aching, as she tried once again to right herself. 

"Let me help you," the voice said. 

_Female, definitely,_ Beth thought, but the arms were strong and capable. They righted her against the stone wall, and slowly removed the blindfold from over her eyes, and delicately peeled the tape away from her mouth, but left the rest of her restraints in place. She blinked several times, her head dropping down towards her chest, some hair falling into her face. After a few fuzzy minutes, she finally accustomed herself to the dim light of the basement. A hand came forward to brush the hair from her face, and she opened her mouth in thanks, when her head came up to see her savior. 

Instead of words escaping, what came out was a shrill scream, and then another. One of the hands that had helped her came up over her mouth, to still her cries. 

The face that she was staring into was her own. 

"What do you mean the voice?" Dana asked. 

"The voice�the one on the phone," Mulder explained, "I thought that it was the phrase that I'd heard before, but it was the voice. 

"So where did you hear it?" 

"At the warehouse. The two men that took me�I'm almost positive that the smaller guy was the one who called today." 

"The ones who killed Juda?" Alex asked, his eyes widening. 

Mulder nodded. "Dammit!" he said, jumping up and grabbing his coat. Alex was already shrugging his on and pulling the door open.

"What is it?" Dana asked, following them out of the office. 

"The voice belonged to Mirstov's friend. I thought it was a little suspicious that they were shipping Mirstov out of the country so quickly, but it was just a blind. They tried to side-track me from Mirstov by taking Beth, and they would have gotten away with it, too, if I hadn't recognized that voice." He pressed the elevator button impatiently. "He could be out of the country already." 

Dana was on her cell. "Walter, we've got a situation. Where are you?" She listened for a few minutes, then gave him a brief summary of everything that they knew up to this point. "Can you meet me at the CIA building in�" she checked her watch "about twenty minutes? Great." She pocketed the phone and turned to Alex. "What was the name of the agent that took Mirstov?" 

"Morris," Mulder said, before he could answer. 

"You know, for an ex-FBI agent, I'm clocking more time with you than when I was your partner." 

"You should come back," Alex said. "We'd make a hell of a trio."

"We _do_ ," Dana said. 

A sudden flash of an overhead light in the basement temporarily blinded both of them. The woman dropped her flashlight on the ground, swearing as it rolled away from her. She turned towards the stairs, where a large man was descending. 

"What the hell are you doing down here? Get away from her!" The man held a gun in his hand, pointed at the fake-Samantha. 

She raised her arms, stepping away from Beth. "You want me to be her, don't you? How do I learn to be her without seeing her?" 

"You're a goddamn actress! You _act_. The surgery was the hard part." He glared at her. "Dammit, she's seen us now�we're gonna _have_ to kill her." 

She shook her head, lowering her arms. "You were always going to have to kill her, Buddy. You didn't really think that the boss was going to all of this trouble just to let her go, did you? You might as well leave me down here with her, and let me watch her for a while."

"You've been watching her for over a day already." 

"Watching her sleep, yeah," she said, dryly. "I think I have the unconscious part of her personality down pat. I've got to get her voice, her mannerisms, her body language. I can't do that when she's lying there in a lump on the floor." She slithered over to the large man, whose attention was increasingly wavering between the gun in his hand and the two women before him. "C'mon, Buddy, let me untie her. You know I can take care of myself." 

"Yeah, well, if she tries anything, it's your hide." 

She flashed him a smile. "Thanks, Buddy. Give us a hand, okay?" 

He put the gun down on top of a case, and started untying her. 

"What the hell are you two doing? Trying to pull a double-cross?" The other voice she'd heard, Beth realized. 

"Aw, Kenny�it's okay. 'Sam' just wants to watch her do stuff." 

"Jesus, Buddy�why don't you just hand out business cards? You are going to stay down here while she 'watches', and watch _her_. The first sign of anything funny going on, and you can kill them both."

'Sam' started to protest, but Kenny replied, "You don't honestly think that the boss couldn't come up with another to replace you, honey? You're crazy." Her smile faltered only a little, and she continued to tug at the ropes holding Beth prisoner. 

"You're never going to make that plane, Agent Mulder." Morris was looking at him with something like contempt. "It leaves in less than thirty-five minutes. This is a delicate diplomatic situation." 

Mulder threw him against the wall. Alex and Dana looked at each other, but did nothing to interrupt him. They'd been fielding double-talking CIA agents for the better part of thirty minutes, and none of them were in any mood to continue doing it. Dana was hoping that Walter would show up soon. 

"We're talking about a woman's life! I don't give a damn what 'delicate diplomatic situation' is going on! You are going to stop that plane for me, and you're going to do it now!" He removed his hands from the agent's neck, only to give the man the chance to speak. 

"I'm going to have your badge for that, Agent Mulder," Morris said, coughing slightly. 

Mulder pulled out his ID and gun and threw them on his desk. "Here. You can have my VISA and my Boy Scout membership card, too�but stop that plane." He looked ready to take another swing at the man, when the door opened.

"I'd suggest you do just that, Agent Morris." 

The man in the doorway was unknown to the three FBI agents, but obviously not to Morris. He paled slightly. "But, sir�" 

"When I want your opinion, Morris, I'll ask for it." 

"Yes, sir." He picked up the telephone, furious, and started dialling. 

The tall man moved out of the doorway, and Dana smiled when she saw her husband behind him. 

"How did you get results so fast?" she asked, coming up to him. 

"I've been on the phone in the car on the way over here. It helps to have friends in low places. Am I too late?" 

She shook her head. "The plane hasn't left yet." 

"Thank god. It would have been almost impossible to get Mirstov back once he'd left the country." 

"Probably completely impossible," Alex said, glancing at Mulder. "If I know anything at all about Sandro, there would have been a 'welcoming committee' to meet him wherever he'd land." 

"The details of that flight were classified," Morris snapped from behind him. 

"And we all know how well you take care of ex-Russian nationals, don't we?" Alex retorted. "Especially when they're crossed double agents." 

Morris said nothing. 

It was surreal. She couldn't make a move without being scrutinized, but when she'd initially refused to do anything, they'd tied her up again and left her there for twenty-four hours without food or water. It was only after they returned that she agreed to cooperate. _Die of a bullet wound, or die of starvation,_ she thought. _What a choice. At least a bullet is faster._

So she'd eaten, drank, stood, sat, walked and talked for days. 'Sam' studied her, sometimes even making video and audio tapes to refer to, taking copious amounts of notes. _At least she's dedicated to her 'art.'_

She still hadn't been able to figure out what they were doing, or who it was that wanted another 'Sam' in the picture. It had to do with Mulder, that much was obvious, but beyond that was a mystery. She briefly thought of the conspiracies that Alex had told her about, but they'd all seemed so long past, until Fox had been kidnapped. _I guess he was right�nothing is ever over._

_Except maybe for me._

They had him brought in off the plane and to the Hoover Building with an armed escort within two hours. Even though they'd had no sleep for the past two days, Mulder, Alex, and, occasionally, Skinner himself, handled the interrogation of the prisoner. Dana pored over the files that had so helpfully been turned over by their fellow agents in the CIA, most of it already declassified information, and as such, useless. 

Mulder talked himself raw, then let Alex take his turn. They worked in shifts, alternating English and Russian, trying to break down Mirstov. He was a stubborn bastard, and he had absolutely nothing to lose or gain by cooperating with them, and he knew it, keeping his mouth shut. It was only when Alex pointed out that without whatever help they could offer, he'd probably be dead whether he stayed in the country or went anywhere else in the world, that he finally seemed to break down a little. 

They lived in the building, staying there day and night, talking to him. Mulder met Krycek in between one of their marathon interrogations. 

"How are you?" 

Alex shook his head wearily. "He could be me. If it wasn't for you, I could be in the very same situation right now." 

Mulder looked at him, concerned. "If you want to stop for a little while�"

"No," Alex said, "I'm getting close, I can feel it. Somewhere in that thick skull is an ounce of brain matter that's actually listening to me." 

Slowly, piece by piece, they started to get little bits of information out of him. Dana was doing most of their legwork, assisted by several other agents that Skinner had assigned to the case. 

Several of the leads connecting Mirstov with the still-unknown caller were dead ends, but two of them came up promising: a motel room manager who remembered a man who vaguely fit the description that Mulder had supplied to a sketch artist, and a waitress in a bar down the street from the motel. They traced the car registered to the motel room to a rental agency in Alexandria�it was a dark-blue sedan, which the hospital nurse said looked like the car that had run her down. An APB was put out on the car. 

The waitress was able to provide them with a more detailed sketch of their man�he'd been a regular customer of hers for nearly a week, and a good tipper, to boot, so she remembered him vividly. They ran it through the FBI computer and finally had a name to match the face: Ken Tyler. He had a long list of priors, and a healthy little group of known associates that they started bringing in. 

Faced with their ever-growing pile of evidence, Mirstov crumbled. He gave them all that he said he had, an address of an abandoned farmhouse, on the evening of the fourth day. 

It took only a couple of hours for them to figure out that the farmhouse was, indeed, the place that they were looking for. The team, including Mulder, Alex, and Dana, swarmed the house at dawn, giving the occupants no time to react before taking over. Half the house was asleep, the other half on watch. There were two men in the upstairs bedrooms, but no Samantha. The man in the kitchen put up a struggle and was shot, but not fatally. A woman in the front room came out without any incident, but wouldn't say anything to any of the agents. 

Alex searched the second floor, Dana the first. Mulder found the secret door leading to the basement under the kitchen carpet, and rolled it back. He went down alone, the other agents busy with taking away the half-dazed, half-angry suspects. 

The room was dim, and a flick at the light switch proved ineffective. He could see someone standing in the middle of the room, and raised his gun. "Freeze." 

The woman�he could tell from the silhouette that it was a woman, even in the terrible light�held her hands up. He reached for his flashlight and shone it at her. She smiled. 

"Samantha," he breathed, and lowered his gun. She smiled at him.

A sudden low muffled noise from behind her made him raise it again, even as the woman before him stepped towards him. 

"Mulder," she said, smiling, reaching her arms out to him. 

The noise sounded again, and he flashed his light behind her. He could make out a crumpled form against the wall. It looked like - 

He saw the flash of a gun in front of him and dropped the flashlight, raising his gun in two hands. He ducked from the bullet coming towards him, and squeezed the trigger as he hit the floor, intending only to wound. 

The figure before him fell. 

He watched it in slow-motion. He'd miscalculated his aim due to the sideways motion of his own body, he realized. The sound of the shots brought Alex and Dana down into the basement, flashlights shining on him. 

He was on his knees in front of her, his 'sister'. She still clutched her gun, but her eyes were open and glassy, and he could tell that she was dead even before he touched her pulse. 

The moan brought him out of his stunned reverie. He went over to her, Dana's flashlight guiding the way. 

He pulled the tape away from Beth's mouth, and pulled her into his arms, reaching behind to undo the ropes at her back. Alex came up to help them, while Dana checked the body on the floor. Within a minute they had Beth untied and pulled her up, shakily, onto her feet. 

She turned away from the body in horror, stepping delicately over it, eyes closed, only when she realized that there was no other way to leave the room. Mulder came and put an arm around her, leading her up and out of the house. 

The ride to the hospital was one that they were becoming far too familiar with. Alex drove Dana over, Mulder went with Beth in the ambulance. She gave no protest�she hadn't said a word since they found her. 

Walter was waiting at in the emergency room when they came in, and led them out to the waiting room. 

"What happened?" 

Dana shook her head, and sat down beside him. "I don't even know." 

"If she hadn't said 'Mulder'," Alex said, shaking his head, "he might not have known until it was too late." 

"I didn't even know then," Mulder said, coming into the waiting room. "I reacted to the gun. It was instinct. I wasn't even trying to kill her�" He closed his eyes, and his body sagged a little. Alex came over to catch him, and eased him into a chair. 

"She is dead, isn't she?" he asked. 

"Yes," Dana said, quietly. "How's Beth?" 

"The doctor's looking at her. The paramedics couldn't find anything wrong with her, but they're checking her over again, just to be sure."

"It wasn't your fault, Mulder," Alex said. 

He nodded. "Yeah," he said, and closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall. 

The doctor came out twenty minutes later, and told Mulder that he could go in with her while they arranged for a room. He returned to the same cubicle that he'd left her in and looked at Beth in concern. She seemed to have such a vacant, haunted look in her eyes, even though the doctor had told them again that there was no evidence of any physical damage. They wouldn't know for sure until they finished running their tests, and she had missed two radiation appointments, but her therapy could probably recommence with little damage incurred. The psychological scars were going to be more difficult. 

"Are you hungry?" he asked. She jumped a little at the sound of his voice, and he winced. She shook her head. "When _was_ the last time you ate?" 

"I don't remember." Her voice was low, toneless. She looked at him, a little dazed. "What day is it?" 

"Sunday."

"They had me for five days?" 

He nodded. 

"It felt like longer." 

"From here, too." 

"They kept talking about how they were going to kill me," she said. Her voice was dangerously devoid of emotion. "Once my 'double' had completed her lessons, that is." 

"It's over now." He came over a little closer to her, and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

"It doesn't _feel_ over. She was _me_. _Me_. She looked exactly like me. She was studying me, learning how I walked, how I talked. She was going to become me, Fox. How do we know that there aren't other 'me's out there somewhere? How do we know that _I'm_ me?"

"Beth�" 

"Tests can be faked. Hell, I might have been a man at one time! How are we ever going to be sure who I am?" 

" _I'm_ sure," he said, putting his arms around her. 

"I think we should have the DNA run through again." 

"Beth�" 

"Fox, please. I've been living through a conspiracy for the last week. _I_ want to know who I am." She laughed a little desperately. "Maybe I'm her, and they've just brainwashed me into thinking that I'm Samantha Mulder." She rested her head on his shoulder. "I don't even know what I mean anymore." 

"It's okay," he said, wrapping his arms around her. She felt almost limp in his arms, the weariness washing over her. "We're going to find out what's going on. _I_ know that you're my sister, but if you need more proof, we'll get you more proof." 

She nodded her head. "Do I have to stay here tonight?" 

"That's what the doctor said." 

"Will you stay with me? I know that they've assigned guards, and you don't have to, but�" 

"Try to get me to leave," he interrupted. "I'll be right here, all night. Come on," he said, taking her hand, "Let's go find your room." 

"They're going to have to give me my own parking spot, soon," she said.

He laughed. "If you're not my sister, I think you may be a long-lost Scully." At her puzzled look, he shook his head. "I'll explain it to you later." 

"Bedtime story?"

He nodded. "Sure." 

She stopped. "Mom�" 

"Already called her, and she's on her way." 

She nodded, and didn't notice his smile as they walked down the hall. 

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	6. Six

 

Six

  
**Six  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
Dana looked over the autopsy report on her desk. She'd been studying it for several hours, page by page, until the words started to swim before her eyes, and it still didn't make any more sense than it had the first time. They'd put the body from the farmhouse through every forensic test that they could think of, and they still couldn't figure out who she was, where she came from, and who had sculpted her into a perfect physical copy of Samantha Mulder. Or, even more importantly, why. 

There were no clues, no identifying marks, no nothing. Her original identity had been completely stripped away, and they didn't know anything about her except that she was female, Caucasian, and approximately the same age as Beth. Other than that, she was a Jane Doe, and unless someone came forward, was destined to remain that way. 

Dana picked up the now-cool cup of coffee on her desk and took a swallow, but almost immediately regretted it. Her stomach had been sensitive for a couple of hours now, and she thought she'd probably picked up a case of flu that had been sweeping the departments at Quantico. She closed her eyes for a few minutes and rubbed her temples, trying to get her equilibrium back on track, but it wasn't helping. After a few seconds, she gave up trying to fight it and made a run for the ladies' room. 

It was _not_ starting out as a good Monday. 

Beth eyed the doctor sitting across from her. She'd been expecting him ever since her oncologist told her she was expanding the scope of her treatment to encompass her mental, as well as physical, health. _Nothing like a forward-thinking, holistic doctor._ Aloud, she said, "So, you're the shrink, eh?" 

The doctor nodded. 

"It's gotten that bad? 

"How bad?"

"Well, Doctor Miller suggested that you come and see me, right? That must mean that she thinks I'm dying, doesn't she? And she wants me to make some peace." Beth shook her head. "She should know me better than that by now�if I'm going out, they're gonna have to take me kicking and screaming."

"Why do you think Dr. Miller thinks that you're dying?" 

"Well, the alternative is that she thinks that I'm nuts," she said, wryly. "Maybe I'd _prefer_ to think she thinks I'm dying." Beth smiled. 

"You don't sound at all daunted by the prospect of dying." 

"Should I be?"

"It's been my experience that most people are." 

"I guess I'm not most people, then," Beth retorted. "I've been through all this before, Doc. They thought I was going to die the first time I was diagnosed with cancer, too, and I didn't. Maybe I'll never die." 

"Dr. Miller also told me that you've just been through an extraordinary experience."

"I guess you could say that, if being kidnapped and meeting your double face to face could be considered an extraordinary experience." At his questioning look, she continued. "It's a long story." 

"Well, it's fortunate that I've cleared a lot of time for you then, isn't it?" He returned her indulgent smile. 

She shook her head. "Don't you ever get tired of listening to the ravings of crazy people?" 

"It's my job. Besides, I thought you told me you _weren't_ crazy." 

"I'll leave that for you to tell me, doc. When you hear this story, you may not be so sure. Sometimes _I'm_ not so sure." 

Alex walked into the office of the X-Files, files in his hand. Mulder looked up from typing his report as his partner entered. "That does not look like the face of a happy camper." 

"I think it's going to become contagious," Alex said, laying one of the folders down in front of him. "Read this." 

"What is it?" Mulder asked, putting his glasses on and opening the file. 

"Just read it." Alex poured himself a cup of coffee and waited for the explosion. 

"This cannot be true." Mulder's voice was so calm and soft that Alex nearly didn't hear him. "It isn't possible." 

"It's true all right. The police and fire department reports are attached, in the back, along with one or two of the better newspaper clippings." Alex sat down. "Both the warehouse where Juda's body was found, and the farm where Beth was held, were destroyed by 'mysterious' fires last night. Added with Dr. Hanson's, that make three unexplained cases of arson in the last month, all of them in places with ties to your sister." 

Mulder looked through the rest of the file, then lay it down on his desk. "Fire."

"What?"

"Fire. Where have we seen fire before?"

Alex thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "No. He's dead. They're all dead." 

"Do we know that for sure?" 

"Can we ever know anything about any of this for sure? Mulder, it's crazy. Cancerman is _not_ still alive. He shot himself." 

"And his body was burned in a fire afterwards, along with large amounts of evidence. Startlingly similar to these cases," he said, indicating the case folder, "don't you think?" 

"They identified him," Alex protested. "The dental records?" 

"And records have never been faked?" Mulder leaned back and polished his glasses, the light of his computer shining off the lenses. "Who else could it be?" 

"From what we know for sure, it could be almost anyone." 

"Including Cancerman." 

Alex said nothing. 

By the time Beth finished her narrative, the room had grown quite a bit darker. Dinnertime had come and gone unnoticed. Beth was talking almost as if to herself. 

"It was easier for me the first time. They always say that the first time is harder, because you don't know what's going to happen�fear of the unknown and all of that. It's not true though \- the second time is much harder, because you know _exactly_ what's happening to you, even before it happens. Everything that could possibly go wrong is magnified in your mind a hundred times. 

"The last time, they all treated me like a child, which I was. The doctors never told me anything, never explained anything to me, and I didn't have anything to fear because I never knew what any particular day was going to hold in store for me. Everybody that I knew in the hospital was sick, too, so we were all in the same boat and there was no room for pity or anything like that." 

"And now?' 

She'd almost forgotten that the doctor was there with her, and started a little. "Now, there's more to think about than myself. I have a family�a brother and a mother that I never knew about. I have a chance to have something that I never thought was possible, and I don't want to lose it." 

"It must have been very difficult for you, to be confronted with an ‘instant family' after so long." 

"Uh-huh." 

He smiled at her. "And how do you feel about that?" 

"I was _wondering_ when you were going to ask me that question." 

"I've been biting my tongue for over an hour." 

Beth laughed. "You know, for a headshrinker, you're not bad." He bowed his head. "How do I feel about it?" she repeated. "I have no idea. Happy, excited, scared, angry. The usual gamut of feelings, I guess." 

"You're close to your brother?" 

"I want to be. I'm trying to be." She shook her head. "It's hard for both of us." 

"I just want to know how it is for _you._ " 

She took a few minutes before she answered. "He wants me to be his sister so badly, and I am, but�" She shook her head again, frustrated. "I don't know how to explain it. Sometimes I feel like he wants me to be eight years old." 

"What do you mean by that?" 

"It's like he resents me for growing up on him. Like he wanted Samantha back just the way she was when she disappeared." 

"You talk about yourself like a separate person." 

" _I'm_ Beth. People just keep trying to convince me that I'm Samantha Mulder." She half-smiled at him. "I told you you'd think I'm nuts." 

"I understand what you mean." 

"Great. Maybe you could explain it to me, then. And Fox." 

"Have you tried to talk to him about any of this?" 

"We don't talk very well, either of us." 

"You didn't seem to have very much problem talking to me today." 

"Yeah, well�I don't know you from Adam. I can't disappoint you. And, well�no offense, but I don't really care what you think. I don't want him to leave me alone again." 

"And you think he will if you tell him the truth?" 

"I don't even know what the truth _is_!" She took a deep breath, calming herself down. "No. I don't think he'd leave me. I just don't want to give him a reason to, I guess. I don't know what I want." 

"I think you know one thing." 

She smiled. "Right, I forgot. There's one thing in the whole entire world that I know for sure�I don't want to die." 

Walter Skinner didn't even look up from his desk as the door to his office opened. "I thought I told Kimberly I wasn't seeing anyone today."

"She made an exception for me." Dana sat down in the chair opposite her husband's desk. 

"Hey." He stood and came around the desk, giving her a kiss before perching on the edge of the desk in front of her. "I thought I was picking you up tonight." 

"It _is_ tonight," she said. "I figured you hadn't noticed that it's six o'clock." 

He grimaced, looking at the clock. "I'm sorry. I've been trying to deal with this paperwork all day. I guess I lost track of time." 

"It's okay." She smiled tiredly. "I don't suppose I can talk you into carrying me home?" 

He laid a hand on her forehead. "You feeling okay? You look terrible."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Thanks a lot. I think I may be coming down with something. I don't seem to have any energy, and I was sick at work earlier. I probably picked up a bug somewhere." 

"It's probably overwork." He put his jacket on and held out his arm to her. "Let me get you home and pamper you like a good husband should."

"You've got a deal, believe me." 

The two agents stepped tiredly into their apartment. Alex dropped his keys down beside the phone and checked the answering machine. "Do you feel like listening to fifteen messages?"

"I'll _pay_ you not to turn that on," Mulder answered. 

"Deal." Alex pulled off his tie and headed for the bedroom. "Dinner?" 

"You want to phone, or will I?" 

"I'm not even hungry. Get whatever you want," Alex called out.

Mulder picked up the phone. "I'm just going to call Beth and see how she is." 

"Say hi from me."

The phone was answered on the fifth ring. "Hello?" The voice on the other end was slightly groggy. 

Mulder winced. "Did I wake you?" 

"Fox? No," Beth said, not very convincingly. "I was reading."

He was silent for a few seconds. "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah," she said. "I'm just�tired, that's all. Nothing to worry about." 

"Do you want me to come and see you tonight? There's still a little while before visiting hours are over." 

"No, don't bother. It was a busy day. I'm probably just going to crash soon anyway." 

"Okay," he said, trying for a brighter tone. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Sure. I'll see you then. Good-night." 

"Good-night." He hung up the phone. Alex's arms came around him, and he leaned his head back against his lover. 

"She's okay?" Alex asked. 

"That's what she says." 

"Then believe her, Mulder. You can't do it all for her, you know. She just needs some time." 

"I _hate_ feeling helpless." 

"You're not. There's a lot that you and I can do�but we can't do it all right now." He brushed a soft cheek against Mulder's neck. "Just let it go�for a little while. Just for tonight." 

"And do what instead?" 

Alex kissed him softly. "Come to bed with me. _I_ need you." 

Mulder turned around, pulling away, and there was regret in his eyes. "I've been neglecting you too, haven't I?" 

"Stop that! Stop blaming yourself for everything that happens to the people around you!" There was genuine frustration and anger in Alex's voice. "Give yourself a break, for once." 

"You don't have to yell, you know." 

"Trying to talk to you does me as much good as banging my head against the wall sometimes. Yelling feels better." 

"Shh." Mulder kissed him on the mouth, softly. Alex was still stiff and unyielding to him, but Mulder kept on, kissing and touching him, pulling him slowing towards the bedroom. "I'm sorry." Alex opened his mouth to protest the apology, but Mulder put his hand up over to stop him. "Last 'sorry' that you'll hear out of me tonight, I promise." 

They were inside the darkened bedroom before Alex kissed him back. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to yell at you." 

"I needed it. Sometimes you just have to take me and bang _my_ head against the wall, to get me to listen." His lips quirked into a smile. "You used to be rather good at that, remember?" 

Alex rolled his eyes. "I knew my past would come back to haunt me." 

"Wanna play 'catch the intruder' tonight?" Mulder grinned. "You can be the intruder, and I'll be the frightened homeowner." He pretended to cower. "Oh, please don't hurt me, mister burglar," he said, in a high falsetto. "I'll do _anything_." 

"I'd rather just play doctor," Alex laughed. "Turn your head and cough." He licked the side of Mulder's neck, and pushed him down on the bed. 

Walter come out from the bathroom and looked at his wife, curled up on her side in their big double bed. He sat gingerly down on the side of the bed and rubbed his wife's back. "Are you feeling any better?" 

Dana just nodded mutely, fighting the waves of nausea. She was just as sick now that she was at home as she had been at work, and had barely been able to sleep at all, despite heading straight for bed without even a thought of having any dinner. The mere idea of facing food nearly made her sick again.

"I'm making you an appointment to see the doctor first thing tomorrow." 

"I'm sure it's nothing, really. Just a touch of the flu, or something." She tried to smile at him. 

"You're one of the healthiest women I've ever known� except for�"

"It's not the cancer again. I _know_ that." She tried for a smile. "This feels completely different. Horrible, but different." 

"Well, we'll just make sure that it isn't anything serious." 

"I _am_ a doctor, you know." 

"Then I'd like a second opinion." 

"Fine. Call in the morning. I'll never be able to get in right away, but call." 

Walter smiled. "Now I know you're sick. I won with barely an argument." He dabbed a cool cloth against her forehead. "And I'll find someone to take a look at you. I _know_ people." 

"I knew there was a reason I married you." 

"Besides my bedside manner?" 

"Don't make me laugh. I'm too miserable." 

"Okay, I promise." He held a hand to her cheek. "Your colour is a little better." 

"I think I may be getting my equilibrium back," she smiled. "It doesn't feel as bad to be alive, now." 

"This doesn't mean you're getting out of going to the doctor, you know."

"I didn't think it would be as easy as that," she sighed. 

"Why do you love me, again?"

"It's your glasses. I told you before." 

"I'm serious." Mulder turned around in the bed, and reached for the light switch. Alex ducked his head under a pillow. "Too bright?" 

" _Much_ too bright." He peeked out a little. "Why is it that you never just fall asleep after sex, anyway? Every man I've ever known in my life has been completely unconscious within thirty seconds of orgasm, except for you. You always want to have deep and meaningful conversations." 

Mulder grinned at him. "I'm just special, I guess." He paused for a moment. "How many is 'every', anyway?" 

Alex sighed, finally emerging from under the cover. "What?" 

"You said 'every man' you've ever known. I was just curious as to how many 'every' would be. A dozen?" 

Alex looked at him. 

"Am I high, or low?" 

"If you're asking me if I'm easy, you should know that better than anyone yourself, shouldn't you?" 

"I just want to know _everything_ about you, baby," Mulder purred. 

"Oh, stop trying to butter me up. You really want to know?" 

Mulder nodded. 

Alex thought for a couple of moments. "Forty-two," he finally said. 

Mulder's jaw dropped open. "You've slept with _forty-two_ men?" 

"Uh-huh," Alex nodded. "You asked." 

"I didn't think you'd _tell_ me." 

"I promised you to always tell you the truth, remember� love, honour, and obey?" 

"You never promised me any such thing!" 

Alex looked at him, wide-eyed and innocent. "It must have been one of the other ones, then." He puzzled. "Maybe it was thirty-six." 

"Thirty�" 

"Or maybe it was twenty-nine. He wanted me to run away with him and join the circus." 

Mulder, finally catching on to Alex's teasing, rolled over on top of him. "You are a terrible person, you know that?" 

"And asking me how much I've slept around isn't terrible?" 

"Well�you didn't have to string me along like that. I've a good mind to call up 'thirty-six' and tell him to come and take you back." 

"It wouldn't work. I had to kill him after we broke up. It was a matter of national security," Alex giggled. 

"Oh, shut up." 

"Make me." 

"Gladly." Mulder threatened him with a pillow. "Oh, hell� maybe I'll just kiss you." 

Beth had fallen asleep reading, and none of the night nurses on duty had come into her room to turn of the light over her bed yet. The dark-suited man outside her hospital room had no troubling watching her through the door's window. 

He stood there for at least twenty minutes, then turned away. _Not tonight. Soon, Samantha�but not tonight._

He pulled the collar of his coat up around to shadow his face, reaching inside the right pocket almost automatically as he did so.

A passing nurse spoke to him. "I'm sorry sir, but there's no smoking in this hospital." 

He glanced at her, a smile curling the edges of his mouth, then lit the end of the cigarette in his mouth. He'd never liked hospitals, anyway... 

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	7. Seven

 

Seven

  
**Seven  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
"I want to thank you for coming in to see me this morning, Mr. Mulder. Your sister asked me to talk to you about her condition." Dr. Miller leaned back in her chair. "She's not responding as well as we'd hoped to the treatment," she continued. 

"The cancer hasn't spread?" he asked, apprehensive. 

The doctor shook her head. "No, it hasn't spread�not so far. But I was hoping to see some marked improvement over her last blood tests, and that hasn't happened. So, what we're going to do is look at some alternative drug therapies." 

"You're stopping the radiation treatment?" 

"Not yet. I'm talking about something to go along in conjunction with the radiation." 

Mulder slumped down in his chair. "She's so weak from that, I can't even imagine what increasing her chemo is going to do with her." 

"Mr. Mulder, we have got to attack this cancer aggressively if we're going to beat it. I wish I had another alternative, but I don't." She smiled at him. "I know now why Samantha wanted me to talk to you for her." 

He nodded, lost in thought. All of a sudden, he asked the doctor, "Samantha?" 

"Your sister. It's what she asked me to call her." Dr. Miller stood and picked up some charts on her desk. "I admit that it was rather sudden, but she requested it. She's asked to have all of the personnel on the floor refer to her as 'Samantha Mulder.'" She smiled warmly at Mulder. "She said it was a long story." 

"She wasn't kidding," Mulder said, under his breath. "Can I see her?"

The doctor strode to the door and opened it. "She's not in treatment right now, so she's probably in her room. I'm sure she'd be happy to see you." 

He stuck out his hand. "Thank you for telling me." 

"Of course. If there are any questions that you have, don't hesitate to ask me. And try not to worry. She's very perceptive, and it's not good for her to worry. Or you, as a matter of fact." 

"I'll try," he said. 

He stood in the doorway and watched her for a few minutes. She was writing intently in the small coiled journal that she'd been keeping over the past few weeks. He didn't want to disturb her�it was good just to see her. She _seemed_ fine�as well as she had been, but he realized that she'd been getting more and more tired as the days passed, and she weakened. He hadn't seen it before only because he hadn't wanted to. 

As if by telepathy, her eyes raised, and she smiled at him. "Hey." 

He stayed in the doorway. "Mind if I come in?" 

Samantha waved him over. "Of course." 

He sat on the chair by her bed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small keychain before he did. "I got you a present." 

She looked at it. "Tetris?" 

He shrugged. "It was the best thing in the giftshop." 

"Thanks," she laughed. "I _have_ been going a little stir-crazy in here."

"I thought it might help." He paused. "I talked with Dr. Miller this morning." 

Samantha nodded her head. "I know. I asked her to explain things to you." She smiled. "It's all going to be okay, you know," she said. "I have a feeling about it." 

"Far be it for me to question your feelings." 

"Good boy. How's Alex?" 

Shades of a goofy grin came into his eyes. "Wonderful." 

"As always." Her eyes clouded a little. "Hold on to him." 

"I intend to." 

She nodded. "Do that. Don't take him for granted. Don't let anything�or any _one_ �break you up." 

Her tone of voice started him in it's intensity. "Are you trying to tell me something?" 

She shook her head, plastering a smile on her face. "Of course not. Just trying to give you some sisterly advice." She picked up the tetris game. "Want to play high scores?" 

"Sure." He couldn't shrug off the nagging feeling in the back of his mind, but decided to leave it alone for a while. "The doctor told me you've changed your name," he said, casually. 

She glanced up, the smile in her eyes genuine this time. "I thought it was about time to admit to the world who I really am. You don't mind?"

"I'm thrilled." He matched her smile. "Mom will be, too." 

"I know. It was mostly for her that I decided to do it�for the both of you. I know how important it was for you to have Samantha back�even though I'm not 'really' the little girl you lost�"

"You're my sister. That's all that's important." 

She nodded. "I hoped you'd say that." She handed the game over. "Your turn." 

Dana Scully put her jacket back on and sat down in the chair directly across from the doctor's desk. Her examination was finished and she was waiting for the doctor to give her the good word�she hoped�but mind was racing with a thousand and one things that could possibly be wrong with her. Despite her assurances to Walter, cancer was definitely one of them. 

But it couldn't be, could it? Not when things were actually settling down for a minute? Beth was found, Mulder wasn't missing, Walter was trying to cut back on work, her mom was fine. Now was definitely not the time to be sick. 

Not that she was sick, of course. It was probably just stress - 

The doctor came into the room and leaned against his desk. "Well, Agent Scully, I'm happy to tell you that there's nothing wrong with you. I'd suggest that you take it easy on your workload, but I try to tell that to all of my patients who work at Quantico, and it usually falls on deaf ears." 

Dana smiled. "Occupational hazard." 

"So I've heard."

"So, these symptoms that I've been having have all been caused by stress? I've never had such a violent reaction before."

"Well, no, as a matter of fact. I said that there was nothing wrong with you, and there isn't, unless you weren't planning on becoming pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Dana was stunned. 

"Congratulations. You're about eight weeks along." He looked at Dana in alarm. "I take it that this wasn't planned?" 

"No. I mean, we've been trying. I'm just wondering what kind of doctor I am that I couldn't figure this out for myself." 

" 'Physician heal thyself'," he smiled at her. "I've been trying to get a handle on that one myself, for years now." 

Dana grinned. "If you figure it out, give me a call, okay?" 

"Only if you'll do the same for me." 

"You've got a deal." The news suddenly hit her. "I'm _pregnant_." She jumped up. "I've got to go tell people." 

The doctor laughed out loud. "Congratulations again, Dana. Tell Walter that he doesn't need to send me those ball tickets�this is the sort of thing I'm glad to re-arrange my schedule to do." 

It was perfect�there was nobody there, nobody around. He'd had to wait for several hours outside in his car�for afternoon visiting hours to be over, before evening hours began�but he'd timed his entrance perfectly. Rounds had just been made, and the nurse would be at least thirty-five minutes before she came anywhere near the room. 

It was all going to be so simple. 

He saw at the glance through the door that she was asleep. He'd learned over the last few days of observation that she slept a lot�a side effect of the treatment that they were giving her. She'd be asleep for another hour, probably, until the last visitors of the night arrived. Probably Sarah, maybe Mulder again. Possibly both of them, although they usually came separately. 

He couldn't decide whether he wanted her awake or asleep. Better for her if she never knew what was happening to her, of course, but once the drug entered her system, she'd be unresponsive, anyway. There would be no way for anyone to know that her condition was not caused by the cancer that was ravaging her body, but by a subtle fast-acting poison�not until it was too late, and probably not at all. He thought he might be justified to give her a moment of absolute clarity, to let her know just what was happening to her�to let her understand that it was all going to be all right, and her suffering�and that of the people whose lives she'd touched so recently�was going to be over. 

In the end, he slipped into the room, silently, and let her continue to sleep. His shoes made no noise on the floor, and she didn't hear the prick of the needle entering her i.v. The steady drip of fluid entering her body continued, unabated. 

This time, he waited until the automatic doors of the hospital's front entrance had slid shut behind him before he struck the match and cupped it over the cigarette in his mouth. His crepe-soled shoes stepped carefully over the discarded match. As he left, he looked instinctively around, pulling the collar of his overcoat up a little higher to disguise his face. There was absolutely no-one noticing him�only regular hospital personnel and people coming to visit their loved ones. He smiled, took a deep drag on the cigarette, and started to walk away from the hospital. 

Oh, it was going to be a very good night, indeed. 

Dana lingered in the doorway of her husband's office, watching him work, the pen in his hand flying across the reports that lay open across his desk. It was after six, and most of the floor was deserted, including the desk that Kimberly usually sat at. Only Walter Skinner remained, ever-dedicated. Her smile echoed across his face as he glanced up and saw her standing there. 

He stood and met her halfway across the floor. Some of the tension had eased off of his shoulders when he saw her smile. He enveloped her in a hug. 

"So how was your doctor's appointment? Did everything check out all right?"

"Fine." She looked at him, the smile dancing up into her eyes. "I was just trying to remember�did we ever decide on a name?" 

"A name? For what?"

Dana just kept grinning at him, and finally the light dawned in his eyes. "You mean you're�we're�" 

She nodded. "Congratulations, daddy." 

He squeezed her again, in a massive bear-hug, and then abruptly stepped away. "Oh�you should be sitting down. Come here," he almost dragged her over to his leather chair and gently pushed her down into it. "Do you need anything? Do you feel all right? We shouldn't stay here. I should get you home�" 

She laughed, trying to get a word in edgewise. "Relax, Walter. You have seven and a half more months to be crazy, and I'm fine. I'm perfect. I'm wonderful." She was beaming. 

"You can say that again." He dropped down to his knees and rested his head against her stomach. 

"You're not going to be able to see or hear him without equipment, you know. Not for a while." 

"Him?"

"Or her," she amended. "Better than 'it', don't you think?" 

"I wouldn't even care if it was an 'it'," he said. "As long as it's our 'it'." 

"No way," she said. "I want a 'he' or a 'she'. I'm not having our child become another X-File. If it's an 'it', Mulder and Alex will have to raise it." 

Walter laughed, his deep bass ringing through the office. "Agreed. She�or he�but definitely not 'it'." 

Sarah Mulder chatted with a few other parents and family members on her way to her daughter's room. She'd come to know some of these people as familiar faces during the hours that she'd spent on this floor, and regarded some of them as friends. They were all in very similar situations, worrying, bucking each others' spirits, waiting to see if their loved ones would improve. 

There was a nurse in Samantha's room when she opened the door. "She's still asleep?" Sarah whispered. 

The nurse who was taking Samantha's pulse nodded her head, smiling across the bed at Sarah. "The doctor increased her treatment dosage today. It isn't an usual side-effect." 

Sarah nodded. Something�something just didn't look right about Samantha. She never usually slept so soundly�the treatments were terrible on her system, and she was often quite violently ill after them, sleeping often but quite lightly, awake with every turn of her battered body, or every sound that hit her ears. Still, she was prepared to be grateful for anything that afforded her daughter some much-needed rest. 

She dropped into the seat beside the bed, nodding to the nurse on her way out. They should have been able to come up with something more comfortable, but never had. She pulled open her purse and drew out a book that she'd been reading� just something to pass the time until Samantha woke up. 

"Alex?" 

"Hey, where are you?" 

"Just pulling up to the hospital now. I wanted to stop off while mom was here and tell her and Sam about Scully in person."

"What about Scully?" 

Mulder grinned. "She's going to be putting on some weight for about the next nine months." 

"She's pregnant? That's fantastic!" 

"Yeah, she just called me. I figured they could use some good news, and Scully gave me the okay to go ahead and tell them." 

"Great. Bring some dinner on your way home, would you?" 

"What do you feel like?" 

"Oh, I don't know�what goes with naked F.B.I. agent?" 

Mulder groaned, his pants suddenly _much_ tighter at the crotch. "Alex�" 

Alex's voice grew even more silky. "C'mon. We haven't had phone sex in ages." 

"One, I'm driving, and two, I'm about to see my _mother_ and my _sister_. Walking in with an erection is not something I really want to do in that company." 

Alex laughed. "I think they both know that we have sex." 

"Yeah, and I'm sure they picture it every chance they can," Mulder added sarcastically, a shudder going through his body at the thought. 

"Fine, no phone sex. Just come home as soon as possible and we can have _real_ sex." 

"Promises, promises. That's what you said last night." 

"And _you_ didn't get in until after eleven." 

"I didn't know you had such an early bedtime." 

"Only when my partner ditches me and I'm forced to write up _our_ reports for four hours. It's enough to send anyone to sleep early." 

"Sounds like a real slavedriver." 

"Oh, he is. I could be enticed to drop him and hook up with you if the price is right." 

"Rentboy." 

"I love it when you talk dirty, Mulder." 

Mulder laughed. "I'm in the parking lot, and I'll see you in about an hour." 

"You've got a date." 

He was happy, thinking about the little Scully on the way, smiling to himself as he got off the elevator. He wasn't expecting the room to be empty when he entered it. A tingle of something fluttered across his mind, and he chose to believe that it was happiness. Maybe Samantha was feeling so well that she'd gone for a walk. Maybe their mother had taken her to the sunroom, to get some exercise, to get away from the same four walls - 

He strode to the end of the hallway, where the sunroom was located, but there were only two patients there, reading, and neither was Samantha. The tingle shifted, raising the hair on the back of his neck. 

He walked to the nurses' station, and opened his mouth to ask. The desk nurse, recognizing him, simply said, "Mr. Mulder, we've been trying to reach you. It's about your sister�" 

He knew the way to ICU without being told. He could see Sarah standing in the hallway, shoulders slumped, from halfway down the hall. A cold trickle of dread iced through his veins and he instinctively ran towards her, brushing roughly past the people in his way. "Mom?" 

Her face was stricken, and she turned towards him. "Fox, thank god you're here. They told you?" 

He shook his head. "I just got here. What's going on?" 

She looked through the glass into the small room. There was a doctor and a nurse inside, cutting off Mulder's view of the patient in the bed. "She's in a coma," she said. 

Mulder shook his head. "I was talking to her not more than three hours ago. She was fine. She was joking with me. It can't�" 

"They don't know what happened to her. A nurse came in to get her ready for her treatment, and found her unresponsive." 

"What did the doctor say?" 

"I haven't had a chance to talk to her. They rushed her into ICU and have been with her ever since." She looked at him, brushing her hand against his cheek. "It was almost an hour ago, Fox. I tried to call, but the line was busy." 

"I was at work, and then�" he cut himself off. "I don't understand how this could have happened so _fast_." Memories of watching Dana deteriorate rushed through his mind. They'd been on the very cusp of losing her before she'd been brought back. "She told me it was going to be fine." 

They stood there together, side-by-side, watching the doctor go through a check of Samantha's vital signs. 

The doctor finally emerged five minutes later, and gestured them over to an alcove with a few chairs in it. 

"I want to know what's going on here," Mulder said. "She was _fine_." 

"Mr. Mulder, please. Sit down and I'll tell you everything that I know." Mulder ignored her, continuing to pace. 

Sarah Mulder addressed the doctor. "How did this happen?" 

"Your daughter has been very sick for several weeks now� the interruption of her treatment seems to have had a more severe effect on her than we'd first thought. Although we have changed her treatment, it's had very little effect." 

"And now she's in a coma!" Mulder added. 

"Which might have been caused by several things�an allergic reaction to the drug combination, general system failure. We're doing bloodwork, and we've taken x-rays. When I know anything else, you will be the first to know." 

"Is there anything that we can do?" Sarah asked, anguished. 

The doctor shook her head. "Talk to her. Tell her to fight. And pray." She squeezed her hand, then walked off to the nurses' station. 

They took turns talking to her. Mulder called Alex, who came straight to the hospital, and Dana, who was persuaded to stay home only with the threat of bodily harm and the promise of hourly reports on Samantha's progress. 

He told her stories, repeating the childhood memories that he'd never had a chance to reminisce with her about, so ridiculous their lives had been over the last few months. Alex told her dirty jokes, and Sarah stroked her hand and kept repeating her name, over and over again, begging her to open her eyes. 

Finally, at three thirteen a.m., she did, just for a second. Mulder's heart jumped into his throat as she stared at him, for a second that dragged across his mind, and then the eyes rolled back and were closed again. Alex tore out to get a doctor, but the team was already in, signalled by the monitors at the desk. 

She went into cardiac arrest. Alex had to bodily remove Mulder from the room as they worked on her, frantically pumping drugs and pulsing shocks through her body, but nothing could be done. 

It felt as though it had taken hours, but she was dead within minutes. Mulder didn't even hear the doctor who came out to the hall to tell them. Sarah collapsed in Alex's arms, but for Mulder, the entire world was silent. He could see lips moving�the doctor's, his mother, Alex�but he heard nothing. 

He stayed in the chair he was sitting in, unable to move, unable to think. Finally, Sarah sat down on the chair beside him. "The nurse asked me if I wanted to pack up her things from the room, but I don't want to leave her. She said that she'd do it, if�" 

"I can do it, Mom." Mulder stood up. 

Alex stood as well, intending to follow him, but Mulder shook his head. He didn't want his mother to be left alone, and communicated this wish with his eyes. Alex nodded and sat back down in the chair that Mulder had been in, beside Sarah Mulder. 

_He_ needed to do something, and he walked back to Samantha's room, as if he could transport him back a few hours \- a few _hours_ ago, she'd been there, awake� _alive_. His own lack of any sort of a reaction to this was starting to frighten him� he could see the fear in Alex's eyes, too, but he let him alone. Mulder knew that he'd have to be quick, though, or his lover would be there behind him, to make sure that he was all right. 

As if anything would ever be all right again. 

He opened the door gingerly. The room was quiet, the bed already remade. There were only a few things beside the bed� a couple of books, some flowers, the coil notebook that she had been using as a journal. 

He picked up the book and flipped through it absent-mindedly. It didn't even occur to him what it was he was looking at, it was just something to do with his hands. The tetris game he'd given her lay beside it on the bedside table. 

A loose piece of paper fluttered out of the book and landed on the floor. He bent over to pick it up, and when he had it in his hand, he saw that it had "Fox" written on it. He unfolded it. There was only one word written on the inside. 

"Believe." 

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	8. Eight

 

Eight

  
**Eight  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
Alex turned over in the bed, something unfamiliar about the way that he was sleeping rousing him. He looked around, trying to realize what it was, then sighed. He could faintly hear the television from the living room. A check of the bedside clock showed it to be 2:16 a.m. Just about time for the IronSaver infomercial. 

Mulder didn't say anything until he was fully in the room. "You're just in time. I was thinking of ordering one of these." 

Alex handed him the phone, pushing him over on the couch to make room to sit down. 

"You're supposed to be stopping me. Neither of us can iron worth a damn." 

"I iron wonderfully. I just choose not to." 

Mulder shook his head, dropping the phone on the coffee table. "When I think of what we could be saving on dry-cleaning bills�" 

"Don't get any ideas. I'm not turning into June Cleaver." 

Mulder leaned over and kissed Alex on the neck. "You look lovely today, Mrs. Cleaver." Alex smiled at him. "I'm sorry I woke you up." 

"It wasn't you, it was the bed." 

"The bed?" 

"Uh-huh." Alex lay down in front of Mulder on the couch, pulling one of Mulder's arms around his waist. "I was hot. I'm not used to waking up in the middle of the night and actually having any of the covers. Or a pillow, for that matter." 

"I do _not_ steal all of the covers." 

"Not anymore, but you used to." 

"Alex�" 

"I'm not nagging. This isn't a criticism, and I know it's only been four weeks since she died, and I know how difficult it's been for you�but I need my lover back. If not now, then eventually, I need to know that I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night freezing to death because you've taken all the blankets again." Alex pulled his arms tighter around him. "And if you have to sleep on this couch for a while, I want to be here with you." 

"I don't want to�" 

"What? Be with me?" 

"I don't want to burden you." 

Alex snorted. "I hate to break this to you, _Fox_ , but being in love with you hasn't exactly been a walk in the park before now. I don't think there's any possible thing you could do that would either surprise me or push me away." 

Hazel eyes narrowed at him. "Really?" 

"That wasn't an invitation to try." 

"Damn." He snuggled closer around Alex. "I love this part," he said, nodding at the tv, "it's where they show you how you can save thousands of dollars by hand-washing all of your Italian wool suits and ironing them without a shine�" 

"Are you okay?" 

Walter Skinner was peeking around the corner of the bathroom door, to where his wife was unceremoniously perched by the toilet. The morning sickness, while never actually striking her in the morning, had not lessened at all once they'd learned what it really was. 

"You can come in."

He shook his head. "The last time I tried that, you threw a shampoo bottle at me." He grinned, "I appreciated your sense of irony, if not your aim." 

Dana wrinkled her nose. "Don't make a nauseous woman laugh. It's cruel." 

He came in and wet a washcloth in the sink, kneeling down and wiping her brow with it. "Are you feeling at all better?" 

"I think I'll live," she said, dryly, then, after a moment added, "dammit." 

"Can you get up, or don't you want to risk it?" 

She nodded, and held out her hand. "The walk in here is practically the only exercise I'm getting." 

"You're not going back to work until the doctor says you're okay."

"I'm _fine_ , Walter," she said, leaning heavily against him. "I'm just pregnant, that's all. It happens all the time." She smiled wearily. "My mother always promised me that when I had children I'd pay for how rough she had it with us. I guess she was right." 

"So this runs in the family, then?" 

She nodded. "I remember eavesdropping on her trading pregnancy stories with my aunts. Whoever had the most gruesome one won. I'd always assumed she was making it up." She crawled back into bed, closing her eyes for a moment. "I think a new champion is about to be crowned." 

"I'm sure she'll be very proud." 

"It's the least that I could do." 

"Well, just don't push it too far. I would think that you've got the title well in hand by now." He sat down on the opposite side of the bed. Dana's eyes were closed, and she'd fallen asleep. He smiled, thankful that she was able to have a little respite from her misery. Leaning over, he whispered to the barely-there bulge in his wife's stomach, "Give her a break, okay, Melissa? Let her sleep a little while today. If you do, I'll get you a pony when you're six. Deal?" 

Alex was watching Mulder stare at the wall of their office. He'd been doing it�Alex _and_ Mulder�for forty-five minutes, chewing sunflower seeds and a pencil, respectively, neither of them moving except to pick up another seed and crack it, or shift the pencil. 

Finally Alex put the pencil down and said, "You win." 

Mulder looked at him as if he was only now realizing he wasn't in the room alone. "What?" 

"You win. The contest." Alex came over and perched on Mulder's desk, thrusting his hand into the sunflower seed bag. "I assumed we were having a contest." He popped a few seeds in his mouth. 

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about." 

"To see which one of us would drive each other insane first. I give in. You won." 

Mulder's eyes shifted at his partner, and he leaned back in his chair. "What did I win?" 

"The right to pick out my shrink." He paused, then added, "no hypnosis, though. I just want someone who'll sit me down on a nice couch and ask me about my mother." 

Mulder laughed. "You're right, you are crazy." 

"You've been staring at the _wall_ for almost an hour, and _I'm_ crazy." His hand went back into the sunflower seed bag. "Are you sure these haven't been treated with anything?" 

"I was thinking." 

Alex made a show of being shocked, and Mulder grimaced at him. "I assumed that. Thinking about what?" 

"Life." Pause. "Death."

"Aliens?" 

Mulder raised an eyebrow.

"Last time I looked, that's what we were paid to think about." Alex picked up the folder that was opened on Mulder's desk. "Apparently there's a beauty of one in Wisconsin right now, tipping cows over." 

Mulder groaned. "A bunch of college kids get drunk and pull a stunt that drunk college kids have been pulling since college was _invented_ , and all of a sudden it's an X-File? I'm offended." 

Alex picked up another file. "Vampires in Los Angeles?" 

Mulder rolled his eyes. "Is anyone in Los Angeles _not_ a vampire?"

"You know, I think you're getting cynical, Mulder." 

"I was born cynical."

"So tell me what you were thinking about. Tell me what you want for lunch. Tell me to get off your desk. Tell me _something_."

"Something."

Alex made a move to get off the desk, but Mulder stopped him, wrapping his hands around his waist and burying his face against Alex's stomach. "Sorry," was muffled into his shirt. "Bad joke." 

Alex sighed. "You're forgiven." He was about to lean over and kiss Mulder on the top of the head when a cell phone rang. 

Mulder didn't miss a beat as he pulled the phone out of his suit pocket. "Mulder." 

Alex could hear the other person talking, but couldn't make out what was said. Mulder was saying very little. "Where? Okay, yeah. Twenty minutes." 

When he was finished, Alex asked, "Who was that?" 

"Frohicke. There may be something more to the cow-case than we thought. You want to come?" 

Alex shook his head. "Nah. You go ahead. I've got a couple of calls to make, anyway." He smiled. "Don't eat too many cheese steaks, okay?" 

Mulder smiled. "Deal." 

Alex gave Mulder a three-minute head start, before opening his desk drawer and removing his back-up weapon and sliding it into his ankle holster. As he pulled on his overcoat he muttered, "Frohicke, my _ass_. Only if he's had a sex-change."

The garage was damp and dark, several of the lights burned out around the rendezvous point. Mulder had to drive like a maniac just to make the appointment anywhere near the time he'd been given by the contact on the phone. Something about her voice had made him take her seriously from her first words, and although it went against the nagging voice of reason in his head, had made him lie to Alex about what was going on. He sighed. Old patterns were _damn_ hard to break sometimes. 

Anonymous tips were second nature to Mulder, so much so that he could almost by rote tell the fake ones from the 'truth'. But this one�while so compelling, had drawn him in simply with her final word�"Believe". 

"Dammit." _It probably was a coincidence, it probably didn't mean anything. Either that or you're going to get your head blown off, and some teenagers are going to find you, your picture plastered all over tomorrow's headlines�'FBI Agent Gunned Down Like Idiot' -_

A faint noise to one side made him stop, his hand clenched reflexively around his gun. A whiff of a familiar odour struck him, suddenly. "Oh, my god..." He pointed his weapon towards the noise, and squinted his eyes, trying to see in the darkness. A tiny flicker of red, a little glowing circle in the dark, made him release the safety. "Come out here, you bastard!" 

"This isn't what you think�" 

The voice was wrong, but Mulder was reacting too fast. He rushed towards the figure, his brain sending thoughts sluggishly, _too short, too young, not him_. But he was fixated on the cigarette and struck at the man in the darkness. "Who are you?" he demanded of the man, never taking his finger off the trigger of his gun. 

A cool familiar feeling struck at the back of Mulder's head, accompanied by a female voice directly behind him. "Please don't make me have to pull this trigger." 

"Funny, I was just going to say the same thing." 

The gun at his head moved away, and he turned, dragging the cigarette-smoking man along with him. Alex stood there, training his gun on the woman. It was dark in the garage, and her face was further obscured by the bill of a baseball cap. 

"Are you all right?" Alex asked, not lowering his gun. 

Mulder nodded. "What took you so long?" 

"I was practicing my 'How to Tail Your Lover and Still Remain Mysterious' skills. I lost track of the time." He nodded to the man Mulder still had by the back of his shirt collar. "Maybe you should handcuff him." 

"Ooh�kinky." Mulder leered at him and pulled out his handcuffs, securing the man to one of the pillars in the garage. "Now, if we could find out who his friend is�" He reached over and pulled the hat off the woman Alex was still holding at bay. 

"Jesus Christ," Alex gasped. 

"Not quite," she said, dryly. "Whatever this may look like, it isn't the Second Coming." 

Mulder had lost his voice entirely, and was staring open-mouthed at a woman who was the mirror image of the late Samantha Mulder. 

It took them ten minutes to decide that staying in the underground parking garage probably wasn't the safest place for any of them, and another ten to figure out where to go from there. Finally they jumped in the car and went to a motel outside Alexandria where Mulder rented them a room for the day. 

Samantha�Mulder's mind could _not_ stop calling her that, even to himself�said nothing until they were safely locked inside the room. Alex and he were communicating almost telepathically, Alex still managing to hold himself together reasonably well�well enough to keep his eyes and gun hand fixed on the unknown cigarette-smoking man. He was completely ordinary, about forty, medium height, medium build, nothing distinguishing about him except for the yellow-stained fingers that drummed nervously on the tabletop. Mulder had loosed the handcuffs, but he'd taken the cigarettes away from what looked like a three-pack-a-day regular.

Mulder didn't know what to say, what to ask first, his mind wouldn't slow down for him. Finally, he managed, "You're one of them�the clones." 

She nodded.

"Why did you call me?"

"You have to stop what you're doing." 

He grinned. "They've been telling me that for years. What makes you think that I'll listen now?" 

"Because you had her. Or as close as you're going to get. If you keep looking, then all you'll do is drag out further hurt, for yourself, your mother�the rest of them. You have to stop." She was quietly emphatic. 

He shook his head. "Who are 'the rest'?" His voice belied his disbelief of the entire situation. 

It was her turn to smile�the same full-lipped, broad smile that made Alex shiver when he'd first seen it on Beth. "The other Samantha Mulders." She leaned back in her chair. "You don't honestly believe that she and I were the only two?" 

Mulder said nothing. 

"What do you want me to tell you? About 'our' childhood? About our parents? About the vacations we went on, about the dreams I used to have, about the men who came around our house late at night?" She stilled slightly, her eyes softening. "About the arguments that we used to overhear? How they used to make me cry, and you'd come and�" 

"Stop it." His voice was hard, brittle. "You _can't_ know this. It's not possible." 

"Oh, but it is. Implanted memories, brainwashing. It's not as if any of us were someone else at some time. The only thing that we have to remember was what they told us� we were totally blank slates." 

She continued on, for hours, telling increasingly impossible-to-believe stories, dropping names of covert government agencies easier than the Lone Gunman. A few times, Alex thought of how those three would have loved to be flies on the wall in this very room, soaking up all of the knowledge that was being revealed. She told of growing up on a farm, with the 'others'�other clones of Samantha, of other people, all memories suppressed before the operations were on the brink of discovery and she and the others were shoved out into the unsuspecting world to fend for themselves. She explained how her memories were once again triggered by a chance meeting with 'herself' one day. She talked, always in the same low, calm voice, almost as if she was reciting a litany of a life that had happened to someone else, instead of herself. It was too much to be fake, to intense to be unreal. Alex knew that Mulder was struggling to fight against her words. 

"This is unbelievable." 

She smiled at him. "Sometimes you just have to believe in the unbelievable, Agent Mulder." 

Even before he asked, Mulder had the feeling that he didn't want to know the answer. "How many?" 

"That I know of? Six, so far." 

"And how many are left?" 

She shook her head. "I have no reason to believe that they ever stopped creating her, not unless they were forced to." 

"I want to see them." 

"You can't, at least not the ones that I've found. They're all dead." 

"How do you know that?" 

"Most of them, I found too late. There were only records�adoption papers, photos, family memories. Beth was the only one who was alive." She shook her head. "It's almost ironic that I found her so late�on the brink of life and death. I'm only glad that I was able to help her." 

Mulder's eyes widened. "What do you mean, 'help her'?" 

She was utterly calm. "I helped her to die." 

Alex thought that Mulder was going to scream, but when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. He shut it again, unable to speak. Finally, he said, "You killed her." It wasn't a question. 

"I assisted her death. It was more humane for me to do it than it would have been to wait for the brain tumor to kill her." 

Mulder was in shock. "And you just killed her? That's illegal, inhumane, and psychotic!" 

"She was suffering when she didn't need to. She would have died whether I'd done anything or not." 

"You can't _know_ that!" 

"I can. I know exactly what her condition was, and her prognosis. Ask any doctor in this country�any cancer specialist in the world, and they'd tell you the same thing: she had a death sentence, with no possibility of parole." 

"Why should I believe you?" 

"I can't give you one reason, other than the fact that I'm telling the truth. I don't have any reason to hide it, or lie. You want to call the police and tell them that I killed your sister? I'll make it easier for you and confess. You'll probably get a conviction. It doesn't matter." 

Mulder shook his head. "I don't understand how you can do this. How you can be so matter-of-fact about any of it." 

Her face softened a little, and she sighed. "I know you don't. You think that they�that _I_ , even, with all that you know now, with everything that I've told you�you still think that they were your sister. They weren't. For all intents and purposes, your sister died twenty-four years ago. The rest of us are just vessels, just empty things. Unreal things. Fantasy." 

"But they're people! How can you justify eliminating _people_?" 

"It's the same problem that Prometheus had, F�" she barely stopped herself "�Agent Mulder. They created none of us perfect. There were inherent imperfections involved, and all of us are dying. Various degrees of death, mind you, but still dying." She folded her hands on the table in front of her. "Beth Locke had a bout of childhood cancer after she was placed in the orphanage. That's a common occurrence for all of us. And even if we survived then, the adult recurrence of the cancer would come to finish the job. It's as if we were built with ticking time bombs inside. I have files on all of the women that I found�I can send them to you, if you want to read them. The similarities are quite eerie. Even the woman that you shot in the farmhouse had it. She would have been dead within six months." 

He looked shaken at that statement. "She was one of you?"

She nodded. "She didn't know it. Most don't, never found out." 

"How did you?" 

She smiled. "It wasn't until I turned a corner one day and ran into myself. I had never known anything about who I was�my 'adoption' records were sealed, then destroyed, before I could get my hands on them. As much as I can remember, I was about sixteen when I left the farm and was placed with a family. I had a form of induced amnesia. I was told by my 'adoptive parents' that I was their daughter, that I'd been theirs for years, lived with them all my life, and that I'd lost my memory in a car accident the summer before my senior year in high school. I had no reason not to believe them."

"Where are they now?" Alex asked. 

She shook her head. "I don't know. They disappeared. Sometimes I think that I dreamed _them_ , and not the rest of it. Sometimes I don't know what's real, and what isn't." She sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if any of it matters." Her gaze turned to the man who might have been her brother, in another life. "What I _do_ know, and believe, is that if you continue on this crusade, more people will die, and disappear, and lose their only grasp on who they think they are." 

"The people who did this to you�they can't be allowed to get away with it." 

"They've _already_ gotten away with it. There is no way to turn the hands back on this clock, Fox." She didn't even seem to realize what she'd said, reaching across the table that separated them to grasp his hands in hers. "No matter what you do, you're never going to be that young boy again. And if you do find her, she's not going to be the little girl that you lost. You have to let it go." 

"I don't know if I can," Mulder said, his eyes shimmering with tears.

Her smile was gentle. "You must." She laid his hands back down on the table. "You can't possibly imagine what it's like to watch yourself dying�to know what will happen. To see the future as it will occur, to _me_. I will die. That is certain. I may have six months. I may have one month. But you�you have a _life_. You can stop letting them take it away from you. You can live. For all of us, if you can't do it for yourself." 

Darkness had fallen when Alex looked out the window of the motel. They'd been sitting mostly in silence for long minutes, all trying to absorb what had been said. The man in the corner was nearly asleep, he thought�he was the one unknown factor, still, the one of them who'd yet to say a word. 

"Who is he?"

_Reading my mind again, Mulder?_

"A friend. Someone who's been helping me. Someone who knows what it's like to be an unknown quantity." 

"That isn't much of an answer." 

She smiled. "It's as much as I can give." 

Mulder nodded. 

"I should go." She reached again for his hand across the table, and gave it a final squeeze. "Keep her, Agent Mulder. Keep Beth Locke. Let her be your sister. Leave the rest of them alone�if there are others." She stood, the man in the corner rising simultaneously. "You found her, and you got your answers. Let that be enough." She made her way to the door of the apartment. 

"Where are you going? I don't know _anything_." 

"I can't tell you anything. I can't tell you the answers that you want to know�the whys, the bigger whos. I don't know. I just know what is. Nothing else." She paused. "I'm assuming that you're not going to call the police?" 

He shook his head. "No." 

"Then I'll go." 

He reached out, handed her a card. "Call me. My cell phone number is on the back. Call me _anytime_." 

"It's not going to help anything." 

He continued to hold it out. She paused for another second, then took the card. "Okay," she said, ducking her head. 

She'd almost reached the door when he called out, "I don't even know your name." 

She looked back, a tiny smile almost on her lips, miles away from her eyes. "Oh, I think you do." And then she was gone. 

It felt like years had passed instead of hours when they stumbled, exhausted, back into their apartment. Alex checked the place out, while Mulder collapsed on the couch, disbelief and sorrow warring for precedence in his eyes. 

When he'd swept everything clean and came back to the living room, he dropped down onto a chair opposite the couch. Mulder was lying on his back, his eyes closed. 

"Do you believe her?" 

Alex thought for a moment. "Yes." 

"So do I." Mulder's eyes opened. "I don't know why I do, but I do." He held his hands open. "Hold me?" 

Alex smiled, shrugging his jacket off. He eased his body gently on top of Mulder's and wrapped his arms around him. "Forever." 

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	9. Nine

 

Nine

  
**Nine  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
"What if I drop her?" 

"You're not going to drop her." 

"I _know_ that I'm not going to drop her, but�what if I drop her?" 

Alex chuckled. Mulder was more nervous about the ceremony that they were going in to than anyone else� Dana, Skinner, and little baby Melissa Elizabeth Skinner, included. He put his hand on his lover's shoulder, in an attempt to convey comfort and clarity. "Just keep in mind, when you're standing up there, in front of all of those people, before the altar of god�both of her parents are armed and dangerous, and if you _do_ drop her and aren't dead before she hits the floor, you'll probably wish that you were." 

Mulder glared at him. "Thanks a _lot_." 

Alex grinned. "You're welcome." Under his breath he added, "better you than me." 

"I heard that!" 

"Nothing wrong with your hearing," Alex grinned. "Come on, or they'll start without us." 

It wasn't completely unheard of for a child to have two godfathers and no godmother, but the motley arrangement at the front of the church did raise a few eyebrows�less, certainly, than would have been raised if more of Dana Scully's family had known that baby Missy's godfathers were more than just friends�but what they didn't know certainly wouldn't hurt them. 

She and Walter had considered a few options after Margaret Scully had convinced them to have Missy baptized \- a small concession, Dana realized, considering their less-than-conventional wedding. And, although she wasn't always comfortable with it, her faith _was_ important to her, and she'd give her child the foundation to make her own decision when the time came. Until then, a baptism wasn't a huge deal. 

But the two women who would have served as the ideal candidates for godmother were both gone, both of Missy's namesakes struck down far too soon, before they even had a chance to meet her, and neither she nor Walter could think of anyone who could possibly take their place. Dana's brother's wives were already aunts, Margaret Scully a proud-to-bursting grandmother, and Walter wasn't close to any of his family, so when the choice came, they asked Alex to stand up with Fox in the ceremony. Seeing them together, Mulder so nervously and gingerly holding the tiny charge as the baptism was performed, Dana knew that they'd made the right choice. 

It had been a rough year, for all of them. The pregnancy had gone with relative smoothness after the first trimester, until a few unfortunate bouts of false labour. The final, real thing had been 12 hours�not horribly, unrealistically long, but hardly a walk in the park. They said that you forgot the pain at the first sight of your child�which _wasn't_ true, of course, but Melissa Elizabeth was more than worth all of the pain. There was no question that she was the best thing that had ever happened to either of her parents, and Dana knew that from the moment when she'd awakened in her hospital room to the sight of her big, tough husband melting at the sight of the tiny baby in his arms. There were quite a few Scully relatives in Margaret Scully's small house, there was food, there was much cooing over the baby�who kept her temper for a good hour after being brought home, then decided that enough was _quite_ enough and where the heck was mom anyway? She made her feelings known quite loudly, and her daddy came to the rescue, taking her gently away from a great-aunt and delivering her to her mother, who fed her discreetly and then sat on the couch with Missy sleeping quietly in her arms for the rest of the afternoon. "You'd never know she was your daughter," Mulder said, sitting down on an arm of the couch during a lull in the flow of relatives. 

"What do you mean?" Dana looked at him, mystified. 

"Well, she looks _nothing_ like you," he grinned. 

Dana wrinkled her nose at him. Missy was the spitting image of her mother, even at her tender age. Margaret had brought out baby pictures of both of her daughters for everyone to coo over, and it was readily apparent that this was one child who fit her genes perfectly�with her tiny tuft of red hair and blue eyes, and clear, pale skin, Missy _was_ a Scully woman. 

"Still," Mulder continued, "she _did_ look more like Skinner when I first saw her in the hospital." 

Dana laughed. "You should tell him that. He's convinced that it was an immaculate conception and he had nothing to do with it." 

"Hey, that sounds like an X-File," Mulder said, brightly. 

"No way, Mulder," Dana said, in her don't-even-start voice. "You are not turning _my_ daughter into a case." 

It made Mulder laugh. "Okay. I forgot to give her her present," he said, pulling a slightly wrinkled, Mulder-wrapped present out of his pocket and handing it to her. 

"But I thought that the bunny china was from you," Dana protested, taking the package. 

He shook his head. "That's for the three of you, from me and Alex. This one is just for her, from me." 

"Thanks, Mulder," she said, unwrapping the present. It was covered in a couple of pages from a "Lone Gunman" magazine. When she got the box open, she started to laugh. In it was a little plastic toy cell phone. 

"Just making sure she's prepared," Mulder said, with a grin. "Another twenty years and she'll be ready for Quantico."

"Oh, I hope not. I hope she gets a nice normal boring job�" 

"Like Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs?" 

"Or test pilot." 

"Hey, she could be an astronaut." 

"Or a congresswoman." They both looked at each other, looked at the baby, and shook their heads. "Nah." 

"Whatever she wants to be, Scully, she's going to grow up with one hell of a role model in her mom." 

Dana looked at him with shining eyes. "You know, Mulder, that might be the sweetest thing that's ever come out of your mouth." 

"I'd better shut up then, or Skinner will think I'm flirting with you." 

"Or Alex," Dana agreed. 

Mulder looked around. "Speaking of which, I think he's giving me the 'get me out of here right now before I'm forced to kill one of these women and you'll get no sex other than at conjugal visits' signal." 

Dana looked up, spying Alex in the middle of a group of older women, looking desperate. "Uh-oh," she said, looking past him.

"What?"

"I think Walter's giving me the same signal." 

They opened the door of the X-Files office at ten o'clock on Monday, Mulder slightly ahead of Alex. "You didn't have a thing to worry about, I told you," Alex was saying. "It was fine."

" _You_ were the one who was telling me that my life was on the line if I screwed up." 

"I was just trying to motivate you _not_ to screw up." 

"Right. And I'm just�" Mulder stopped in his tracks, as the lights came up. 

Alex bumped into the back of him. "What's�?" 

They looked at each other. 

"Don't tell me I forgot your birthday," Alex said, finally. 

The office was filled�literally _filled_ �from door to desk and back again, with boxes, all marked 'private and confidential'. There were at least thirty of them, all file-sized and all, from the looks of it, full. 

"Not unless I forgot it, too," Mulder said. He went to the first box and pulled it open, retrieving a file. "I know that Skinner thinks we're gung-ho, but I think this is overstating things a little, don't you?" 

Alex shook his head, managing to squeeze past Mulder and opening another box on his own. "Old paperwork we forgot to sign?" 

Mulder was silent, reading. 

Alex opened one of the files on his own, struck at first by the black-and-white photograph that nearly slipped out on to the floor. It was of a young girl in her mid-teens, with dark braids and a bright smile. He closed his eyes, reflexively. _Not again._

"Apparently she had more luck after she left." Alex leaned over the desk and handed Mulder a cup of coffee. They'd been reading silently through most of the morning, innocuous histories of seemingly unrelated girls and women who had nothing more in common than a mysterious first few years and an uncanny resemblance. The fact that they were all clones of Samantha Mulder was almost an afterthought to the story. 

Mulder nodded. "There's sixteen girls here, with complete background and family dossier." 

"Somebody didn't clean up after himself. In the old days, that would have meant a one-way ticket to a silo in the middle of nowhere." 

Mulder looked sharply up at him. 

" _I_ didn't have anything to do with this," Alex said. 

"I know." Mulder put the folder down. "I can't believe this." 

"Just when you think you're out�" 

"- they pull you right back in again," Mulder sighed. 

"You don't have to go back." 

Mulder looked at him. 

"Okay, it had to be said. What do we do now?" 

Mulder held up a card that had been taped to one of the boxes. On it was a neatly lettered address for a hospital that was just outside of Alexandria, specifying the oncology wing. "We have a meeting with Forsten to pick up those blood test results on the mutant-vampire case, we book our flight to Pittsburgh for tomorrow morning, and then I go here. _You_ go home." 

Alex shook his head. "Let me go with you, at least." 

"No." He was tired, he just felt so tired all of a sudden. He didn't want to go, but he _had_ to. Alex didn't. "No, please," he said, less sharply. "I just have to do this." 

"Fine." Alex picked up his coat. "Why don't I make it easy on you� _I'll_ go and get the test results and book the flight. You go there and I'll meet you at home tonight." He walked out the door without another word. 

Mulder just stared at the closed door. "God, I hope so," he said, and then stood up, slipping on his own coat and heading for the door. 

It wasn't difficult to find the hospital�it was only an hour's drive outside of Washington, to his relief. He checked in at the nurse's station and then went to her room, hoping that he might find her alone. 

He peered through the door before opening it, grateful that there was no-one else in the room. She started talking before he had a chance to say anything. "You'd better have Tupperware in your hands, Mark, 'cause if I don't smell chicken wings in thirty seconds I'm going to be _very_ upset. I'm starving." 

Mulder couldn't think of anything to say, and the silence stretched out over a few uncomfortable seconds. 

"Mark?" Unseeing eyes turned towards the door. "Who's there?" 

"It's not Mark." 

"I'd guessed that. You a doctor?" 

"No," Mulder said, coming closer into the room. "Next of kin." 

She didn't speak at all for a moment. "Jesus." 

"This isn't the second coming, if that's what you think," he answered her, ironically. 

"Why did you come here?" 

He shook his head. "You invited me. Why did you send me those files?" 

"I thought you wanted them." 

"So did I. The last time I saw you, you told me to forget about it." 

"Did you?" 

Mulder was silent. 

"I didn't think so." She sighed. "I know what _I_ think, and if you're anything like me�" 

"So what do I do now?" 

"Forget it. Burn them. Bury them." She shook her head. "I don't know. It's not my fight anymore." She laughed humourlessly. "You know, I always told myself that I'd stop, give myself some time, read the great novels that I always meant to. Unfortunately, brain tumours are wickedly personal things." 

"How long?" 

"I don't know. It may be out of my hands. Not long." She closed her eyes. "I meant what I said the last time, you know�if you spend your life chasing after ghosts, then they'll have won. Hell, they might have won when they took her� neither of us knows. But if I had it to do all over again�" 

"You'd what?" 

She smiled. "I'd probably do the same thing again. But I'd never stop _thinking_ that there might be something else." She extended her hand. "Whatever you decide, I'd like to wish you luck." 

He took it. "I didn't bring any chicken wings, but is there anything that you need? Anything I can do for you?" 

She hesitated for only a moment. "I hate to ask this, but�I'll never have the chance again. I'd like to hear about her�not what I know, but what you remember. If it isn't too difficult."

He shook his head. "No. It isn't." 

Dana opened the door, wishing for a moment that she'd taken Walter up on his suggestion that they hire a nanny, at least for a while. But she'd taken the extended leave from Quantico for a reason�to have some time to bond with her daughter. Walter had taken three months off from the Bureau, surprising her with it a week before Missy was born. They'd had a week together, and then they were three. 

Although, with Missy, sometimes it felt like five. How a child could go through so much milk, so many diapers�the two were related, but still�so much and so little sleep at the same time�it was exhausting just to _think_ about. And she was loving every�or every _other_ �minute of it. 

"Uncle Alex," Dana said, surprised. "What brings you here in the middle of the afternoon? You get ditched by your partner again?" 

He nodded. "I came to see the only person in the world who would understand." 

Dana smiled. "Here, take the baby for a minute. I've got my mother on hold." She handed him a squirming bundle of Missy and went to the phone in the den. Alex followed her, a tender hold on the baby. 

"You look comfortable like that," Dana said, after she'd hung up the phone. Alex was sitting down in an easy chair, the baby in his arms. 

"I had a lot of cousins growing up." 

"Are you sorry you won't have any of your own?" 

"Not really�I like them when I have the option of giving them back to their _real_ parents." That said, he handed her back to Dana, who put her down in a bassinet on the couch. 

"She might just sleep. She's eaten, changed, and run me ragged for a couple of hours." 

"Spoken like someone who loves being run ragged." 

"Well, it's not as though I haven't had any practice." Dana turned shrewd eyes on her guest. "So, what's the _real_ reason that you came here?" 

"Can't I visit my partner's 'ex' every once in a while without being subjected to the third degree?" 

"Nope." 

Alex smiled. "I forgot to give Missy her present at the baptism." He handed over a small wrapped box. "It may be a little advanced for her, but you can save it until she's older." 

"But the bunny china�" Dana said, unwrapping the package.

"Was for the three of you, from both of us. This is just from me." 

Dana grinned, opening the jewelry store box and lifting out a delicate silver charm bracelet. "Oh, Alex, it's _beauti-_ ," she started, then stopped herself, peering closer at one of the charms. "Are those handcuffs?" she asked, finally. 

"I had a hard time finding them that small. They really work, too." Alex smiled broadly. "Just making sure she's experienced in law enforcement. You never know�" 

"Believe me, I know." Dana chuckled. "Do you have any idea how perfect you and Mulder are for each other?" 

He shook his head. "I have to wonder, sometimes." 

"He only ditches you because he loves you and he doesn't want you to get hurt, you know." 

"Is that why he ditched you all those times?" 

She smiled. "I think so, in his own way." 

"Do you ever regret not getting involved with him?" 

"Are you kidding me?" Dana laughed. "We'd have definitely killed each other. I shot him enough times when we were just _friends_." She shook her head. "No, I have no regrets. There was a time when I thought�" She trailed off, a little faraway look in her eyes, before shaking it off. "But I have everything that I never even _knew_ that I wanted right now, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. And he's in love with you, and I _definitely_ wouldn't have been happy to share him." 

"I'd rather have you as a friend than a rival, that's for sure. You're a good shot." 

She laughed out loud. "Damn straight. So you came over here just to make sure that you really _are_ in love with him despite his annoying habits, his general distrust of society at large, and the fact that he hogs all of the covers?" 

He looked at her with shock. 

"That last part was just a guess," she said, holding her hands up. 

Alex chuckled. "I guess so." 

"Good. Feel free to do it anytime. It's good for me to see adults who aren't related to me every once in a while." She stood up. "You want some coffee? I think 'Sesame Street' is on soon, and we never miss it." 

"I'd love some." 

"Great. Channel six."

Mulder opened the door with enormous relief, the silvery-blue glow of the television in the living room visible from the hallway. His coat dropped off his shoulders and onto the floor, and he ignored it, walking down the short hall. Alex was lying on the couch, the eerie silvery-blue tv-glow of his upturned eyes glinting at Mulder. He opened his arms and Mulder eased down beside him, burying his face into the crook of Alex's neck. 

"I didn't know if you'd be here when I came back." 

"My boyfriend was busy tonight," Alex said, softly. "So I waited here for you to come home, instead." 

Mulder's laugh was shaky. He could feel himself on the verge of losing all pretense of control, and his arms tightened perceptibly around Alex. 

"How is she?" 

"Dying," Mulder said. 

Warm lips caressed his ear. "I'm sorry." 

"Don't ever apologize for anything, Alex," Mulder said, "never."

Alex chuckled. "I'm going to remember you said that forever, and remind you of it when we're ninety and you're yelling at me because I left my wet towels on the bed." 

"Good." Mulder started to laugh, almost hysterical. "Do that. I want you to tell me that I'm a crotchety old crank when I'm ninety, that you don't know how you've been able to stand spending the last sixty years with me, that you could have done much better�but I want you to be there to do it. I can't lose you, Alex. I can lose just about anyone else in my life, but not you. Never you." 

"Hey," Alex said, turning his head and searching his eyes. "I'm not going anywhere. You think after we've survived being terrorized, being shot at, nearly being abducted, being beat up, being fugitives, been blown up, nearly being dismembered�that I'm going to let something as stupid as a _disagreement_ break us up?" He shook his head. "No way. It's not an option. You are stuck with me, Fox Mulder." 

Mulder was silent, just holding on, feeling Alex's hands running up and down his back, soothing him. Finally, when his mind stopped whirling and he thought that he could breathe normally again, he opened his eyes. Alex was smiling at him. Mulder kissed him, and then said, "You know what I'd like even more?" 

Alex shook his head. "What?" 

"Being stuck _on_ you." 

"That could be arranged," Alex said, softly. He carded his fingers through Mulder's hair, and kissed him softly. "Let's go to bed," he suggested. 

"No," Mulder shook his head. 

"No?" 

"No." His hands moved down over Alex's shirt, tugging it out of his jeans, moving his mouth down the soft, warm skin of his abdomen. 

Alex's next question was a little breathless, and Mulder felt it as a slight tremor against his seeking lips. "Here?" 

"Here," he affirmed. He tugged at the buttons on Alex's jeans, pulling them apart. He'd felt the erection swelling against his hip, and was pleased to find it full and weeping for him. Alex arched up hard against him when he brushed his lips against it. "What do you want from me, Alex?" 

"Everything," Alex gasped. "I want everything." 

"What do you _need_?" 

"You. Just you."

Mulder took Alex's erection deep into his throat, tonguing him on the way down, licking the sensitive underside and just barely teasing it with his teeth. He could hear the strangled cries that Alex was making only fuzzily, but mostly he was paying attention to Alex's cock�that beautiful, sensual instrument that drove him out of his mind with lust. When it was wetted thoroughly, he released it, sliding up and over Alex's body and kissing away his cries for more. 

"I want you," he said, staring into Alex's slightly glazed eyes. "Make love to me?" 

"I will do anything for you."

"Good." He pulled away his own tie, as Alex fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, then slid his hands over his lover's. Somehow, between those two pairs of eager hands, they managed to get each other naked, without falling off the couch.

They'd never made love there, had never gone beyond kissing and cuddling, always reserving it as the place where they were almost�but not quite�closest. They'd made love in every room, in every position, in every place but this, always holding back. But now, as they turned and Alex raised himself over him, Mulder couldn't remember ever seeing him look as gorgeous as he did in the silver light. 

_Sex and television. My two favourite things._ The thought almost made him laugh, except Alex was on him, opening him and pushing in, and he lost all thoughts except that of pleasure and capture and being held and being owned�being Alex's. He pushed back, and they moved in rhythm, hands that weren't his own wrapping around his own cock and bringing him to the edge, to the summit, over the precipice. 

Just as he was lost, he heard it�a warm rush of breath against the skin of his ear, as Alex kissed him and said, "I love you," before he was flooded with heat. 

"I know." 

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	10. Ten

 

Ten

  
**Ten  
by Mona Ramsey**

  
"I still don't know why we had to meet _here_ , instead of going over this at the office or at home," Alex said, sliding into the booth.

"Shh," Mulder hissed. "Keep your voice down. We don't want anyone to overhear." He looked around, surveying the small coffee shop from the vantage point of their table�he'd purposely chosen the back corner booth so that he had a view of both front and back exits, and could see anyone coming or going. "Did you bring it?" 

Alex nodded, and slid the manila folder across the table. "Mulder�" 

Mulder held a warning hand up when the waitress, bearing a steaming pot of coffee, approached their table. "Can I get you anything?" she asked, pouring Alex a cup. 

"I'll have what he's having." 

She nodded, and turned towards the kitchen. 

When she was out of earshot, he asked, "What _are_ you having?" 

"The special." 

"Which is?"

"I dunno. I just ordered the special. What does it matter?" 

"It doesn't." Alex nodded at the still-unopened folder. "Are you going to look at it here? We've only got forty-five minutes before we're supposed to be back in the office." 

Mulder gave one last look around the room, then took a deep breath and opened the folder. He winced at the photograph that first struck his eyes, almost closing the cover again. "I can't believe that we're doing this." 

"We don't _have_ to, Mulder." 

"No, I said that we would, and we will. It's just� _strange_ , that's all."

Alex grinned. "It figures." 

"What?" 

"Someone who deals, day in and day out, with paranormal activities and X-Files, aliens, conspiracies, and governmental cover-ups, intimidated by travel brochures. Mulder, we've been planning this vacation for _years_ , we don't _have_ to do it now." 

"Well, that's sort of the point. We _have_ been planning for years. Too many years. I feel like if we don't do it now, we never will." He paged through the brochures, highlighting sunny spots, snowy spots, sandy spots, all with pictures of grinning families and happy mom-and-dad couples on them. "Have I ever told you how much fun Graceland was?" 

"Frequently. And you've already been there. The point of this vacation is to go somewhere where even if we hate it, we don't have to leave the room." 

"Well, if that's our only criteria, we could just stay home and not answer the door." 

"You are congenitally incapable of not answering the door, Mulder. Or the phone. Or your e-mail. If we are going to have a real vacation, we have to get away from all of those things." 

"If I didn't answer my e-mail, you wouldn't be sitting here across from me right now." 

"True. But if we're going to be working on X-Files and you're going to be talking to the Lone Gunmen all the time anyway, then there's no point in our going out of town, or even taking time off of work." 

"Except for the fact that we _have_ to." 

"Man cannot live without vacation, Mulder�despite all indications to the contrary." Alex spooned sugar into his coffee. "It's a proven fact." 

"Proven by who?" 

"Psychology Today. March '99." 

Mulder raised his eyebrow, Alex grinning at him over his cup of coffee. He looked so convincing that Mulder decided to believe him, whether it was true or not. _Damn,_ he thought, _-those eyes can get me to believe anything._ He sighed, and flipped through another travel magazine. "Do you have a preference?" 

"I have a preference _against_." 

"What?" 

"No cruises." 

"You have something against boats?" 

"Only since I saw 'Titanic'." 

"Ah. We saw 'Fearless', and we fly all the time." 

"It wasn't the sinking that bothered me. I just hate Leonardo DiCaprio." 

"I see. Okay. No Tennessee, and no Love Boat. What does that leave us?" 

"Europe?" 

"Ugh. No, I don't think so�overcrowded and touristy." 

"We could just get a car and drive somewhere." Seeing the glint in Mulder's eyes, he augmented that, " _Not_ to Area 51." 

"Party-pooper." 

Alex wrinkled his nose, and pulled one of the brochures out of the folder. "How about just picking a sandy beach somewhere�"

"With oiled cabana boys?" 

"Mulder! That is the gayest thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth!" 

"Alex, we've been sleeping together for more than five years," Mulder said, dryly. "I think it's time that I came out of the closet." 

"Not if you're doing it to get your hands on oiled cabana boys, it isn't." He put the brochure down. "Skiing?" 

"As long as neither of us breaks a leg the first day out, I'm up for it." Mulder shuffled through the brochures, then picked up one that he hadn't seen before. "Oh. I think I've found a winner." He held it up for Alex to see. 

"Seriously?" 

"Well, we _are_ going on a 'honeymoon', aren't we?" 

"I suppose so, but�" 

"But what? You're the one who picked these out." 

"I just asked for a mixed range from the girl at the travel agency, Mulder, because I didn't know what _you_ wanted. She put together a broad spectrum of stuff, all different things." His eyes roved over the cover of the brochure. 'A Town for Lovers' was emblazoned over the front, with a happy pair of his-and-hers models hugging each other. It was cheesy, it was over-the-top, it was the stuff of middle-American fantasy. 

It was perfect. 

"It's perfect," he said. 

"I told you so." Mulder smiled at the waitress, who brought over their lunch plates, placing them in front of each of her customers. "Ketchup?" 

"Please." 

She brought it, filled their coffee cups, and left. 

"Well, this doesn't look _too_ bad." 

Alex looked at his plate. A mound of greasy french fries and a hamburger almost as big as his head. He felt his arteries clogging just _looking_ at it. Mulder was happily digging in. He took a forkful of coleslaw that probably, at one time, had been green. "So we've decided?" 

Mulder nodded, wiping his chin with a paper napkin. "I think so." He raised his coffee cup, waiting until Alex did the same, and then clinked them together. "Niagara Falls, here we come."

Three days later, he found himself at a much nicer restaurant�no sticky floors, no coffee cups with lipstick already on them. Cloth napkins. He shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat, waiting for his lunch companion to arrive. 

"Here you are. Wow, it _must_ be serious." 

He nodded at his red-headed companion, as she sat down beside him. They hadn't seen each other in a while, but they made it a point to at least have coffee or lunch once or twice a month, as schedules permitted. He missed the middle-of-the-night phone calls, but they were both different people now, with different�grown-up�lives. "Why is that?" 

"You're having something _green_ , Mulder. Is that a _salad_?" 

He looked at his plate, then up at her. "Is it green?" 

She grinned. "Yes. What's wrong?" 

"Oh, you know�I'm getting older." He patted his stomach. "Gotta think about cholesterol and fat content." 

"Ha." She looked at him critically. He didn't look much different than he had when they'd first met�could it possibly have been _ten_ years ago? More than that. Wow. He still had his swimmer's build, still rumpled brown hair, still twinkling hazel eyes. She didn't think he had the type of physiology where he'd _ever_ have to worry about his weight, but she nodded, approvingly. "So, what's _really_ wrong?" 

"Why do you ask that?" 

"You only get concerned about yourself when you don't want to think about what you're _really_ concerned about. Alex dump you for someone younger and more flexible?" 

"Scully!" 

She rolled her eyes. "Mulder, really�what do you have to be concerned about? You've been together a long time� longer than Walter and I, even. Now _I_ , on the other hand �" She sighed, heroically. "Try having kids, then you'll understand the meaning of the word 'worry'." 

"Missy's only three, Scully. What do you have to worry about? Whether or not she can make her 'e's the right way?" 

She ticked her points meticulously on her fingers as she listed them off. "Day care, pre-school, elementary school�private or public� _high_ school, prom, dating, college, university, career." She put the cup of coffee down on the table. "Why? What are you worried about?" 

He stared at her, his mouth open. After a moment he closed it and shrugged. "Nothing important." 

She raised an eyebrow. "Mulder. Tell me." 

He looked sheepish. "Vacation," he mumbled. 

"What?" 

"Vacation," he said, louder. 

She looked at him, and started to laugh. " _Vacation_? Walter threaten you with gunfire unless you take some time off again?" 

"Something like that. Plus the fact that I promised Alex �" 

Her eyebrow raised again. "You did? Huh. When?" 

"A while ago." 

She stared at him. 

"Okay, okay�five years ago." 

"Five _years_ ago? You know, I'm having him nominated for sainthood one of these days. There should be hazard pay involved for being your significant other." 

He grinned. "You'd qualify for a retroactive cheque, Scully. You _were_ my significant other, for four years." 

She smiled. "And it was real, Mulder. Thank god we didn't _really_ end up together, though�if I'd had to wait five years for a honeymoon, I'd have shot you again." 

He grinned. "Ah, I miss the good old days." 

She laughed out loud. "I could borrow Walter's gun, if you want to make a run for it one of these days." 

"Just give me a head start."

"Not a problem." The waiter brought her a salad. "I didn't�"

"I took the liberty of ordering for you," Mulder said. 

"Oh, well, thank you, then." When the waiter disappeared, she whispered, "Do I want to know?" 

He thought it over for a moment. "Better let it be a surprise." 

After days of frantic packing and arrangements for the X-Files and instructions to the Gunmen, debates over cell phones and call-forwarding and who would take care of the fish, the actual trip was an anti-climax. The flight was short and relatively painless. Alex was surprised when Mulder ushered him from baggage claim to a limo for the drive to their 'cabin of love', as he gleefully insisted on calling it. 

They'd settled on the hotel with adjoining private cabins outside, managing to secure one of the last available. Apparently it was honeymoon season for everyone; either that, or it was always like that in Niagara Falls. The limo shushed past tourist traps and the Falls themselves, finally pulling up in front of their Love Shack. Alex had been a little concerned about their reception, until he talked to the desk clerk, who assured him that they were indeed gay-friendly. 

"Oh, this _is_ perfect." Mulder was grinning hugely, and Alex shook his head and tipped the amused-looking bellboy, who set their bags down by the bed, then left, locking the door behind him. 

And what a bed it was�huge, heart-shaped, covered in yards upon yards of red satin. Red and pink satin pillows, also heart-shaped, were strewn over it. Alex looked up, hoping against hope�ah, yes, there it was. Mirrors on the ceiling. And if he wasn't mistaken - 

Mulder had taken his leather jacket off and was already flopped down in the middle of the bed, in anticipation. "You got any quarters?" he asked. 

Alex held out some change. "Of course." 

Mulder slid the coins into the slot, and held out his hand. "C'mere." 

Alex snorted, and let himself be led to the bed. Mulder hit the slot just as they sat down, and then they were shimmying and shaking as the bed began to rock. He began to laugh in earnest. 

Mulder joined him. "Woo hoo�this is going to be fun, baby!" 

"Well, it _will_ take some of the work out of this honeymoon."

"Oh, I don't know�maybe we can make this bed rock and roll without the money." 

"You think?" 

"It's a distinct possibility." 

Alex got up off of the bed, leaving Mulder sprawled across the blood-red cover, shimmying away. He peeked into the bathroom, almost unwilling to turn on the light. "Oh, my god." 

"What?" 

He shook his head. "I can't describe it. It has to be _experienced_." 

Mulder came over beside him and stared into the room. 

If the bedroom was a paeon to bad taste, the bathroom was the pinnacle. It was a white-trash Nirvana, a low-rent Paradise. Not only the ceiling, but every wall, as well, was mirrored. There was a shower with glass doors, with cherubs and hearts cut into the smoked glass, and a tub built for _more_ than two�heart-shaped, like the bed, with gold fixtures. Everything was pink�Pepto-pink, Jayne Mansfield pink. So pink that you could die and _still_ keep seeing it. 

Alex peered over the side of the tub. "At least it's a jacuzzi." 

"Kind of makes me wish I wasn't colour blind." 

"Damn! I keep forgetting about that. Hell, I'm never going to be able to forget this, and you're not even _seeing_ it." 

Mulder shrugged. "It could be worse." 

"How?" 

A slow grin spread across his face. "I _could_ be seeing it." 

It only took a second for Alex to dash across the bathroom, but Mulder had a head start. He had to make a flying tackle in order to catch him, and they both ended up once again across the bed, laughing. Alex stayed where he was, sprawled over Mulder's back and legs. "You are pure evil," he said, panting. 

"I know." 

"It's a good thing you're so good in bed." 

"Care for a demonstration?" 

"Love one." 

Mulder wiggled. "Well?" 

"Well what?" 

"Get off of me, and I'll show you." 

"Uh-unh. I think I like being _right_ where I am. In fact, I think I might just stay here for the entire week." He pressed his groin against Mulder's ass for emphasis. 

"Ohhhh," Mulder managed, trying half-heartedly to get Alex off of him. "And here I thought you were going to _punish_ me." 

"Don't tempt me." 

"I _did_ bring my handcuffs." 

"So did I."

"I love a man who thinks ahead." 

"I love a man who thinks _with_ his head." Alex shifted over, allowing Mulder to turn on the bed, and then straddled him again, holding his wrists down on the bed and kissing him. 

When he moved his hands away, Mulder stayed in place. Alex reached for his t-shirt, pulling it up out of his jeans and, when Mulder lifted up, up and off of his body. Then he unbuttoned the jeans and pulled them away, down to mid-thigh. Mulder was, as usual, wearing his vivid silk boxers�green and purple happy faces, this time�and they were starting to strain against the swelling of his cock. 

He nuzzled the erection through the silk, rubbing the fabric against both his tongue and Mulder's cock. It moved easily, even when it became damp, and he continued the erotic torture until Mulder's hips began to writhe, as well. Still he didn't let his dick free, although it was fuller now, almost completely hard. Mulder couldn't do anything�his legs were trapped in denim, still, which allowed him very little movement, and Alex was on top of him. He had to submit. 

Somehow, he knew it would be worth it. 

Finally, the head managed to peek out of the front opening of the shorts, and Alex took it in his mouth. Mulder shivered as he felt himself surrounded in warm, wetness and teased with an incredibly busy tongue. Damn, Alex was _so_ good at giving head. His slit was licked and sucked, and teeth just barely dragged over sensitive skin, not enough to hurt, but enough to arouse even further. He felt as though the skin over his dick was going to split, it was so distended. 

"Alex�" 

He paused his ministrations long enough to say, "no talking," and then went back to the exquisite torture. Mulder bit his lip in an effort to silence himself, all the while screaming inside to be allowed to come. Alex would _never_ hurt him, he knew that�but sometimes it seemed as though his levels of self-control were being pushed so far that he wouldn't be able to stand it, and then - 

\- and then, Alex sucked down further, taking more of his cock into his mouth, running his tongue down the blood-filled vein on the underside, and then up again, always concentrating the most attention to the head. He'd reached one hand inside the still-present boxers and was massaging Mulder's balls, encouraging the climax that he still wouldn't allow. 

Mulder tried to think of the most unsexy things that he could�cigarettes, cancer, nuns, the Antarctic�but he kept opening his eyes, seeing Alex's dark head going down on him, and then he'd thrust a little more, a little deeper, and Alex would take it. It seemed as though there was nothing that he _couldn't_ take. 

Then, finally, he came to the point where he wasn't capable of any further thought, and he was floating on pure feeling, every nerve in his body seeming to be centred around his cock, and he couldn't hold it any more. Mulder's body stiffened, and Alex gave one final lick, before his mouth was flooded with warm, salty jets of come. Spurt after spurt he swallowed, greedily, his hand still massaging the balls, prolonging the climax ever more. 

They were both gasping and nearly insensate when they parted, but Alex, still fully dressed, began to shed clothes in earnest. He threw his own on the floor, and then pulled away Mulder's jeans and the half-drenched boxers, turning his body roughly and parting his legs. He spit on his cock and thrust home, pushing into Mulder's body with the ease of practice and a recent orgasm. His rhythm was staccato and erratic, desperate, and he thrust hard, holding Mulder's hips, plunging over and over again into the tight heat of his body. It took just over a dozen strokes before he was coming with a groan and collapsed, letting his sweat-soaked body plaster itself over Mulder's back. 

The last thing he thought before he lost consciousness was _I bet red satin is a _bitch_ to clean..._

They switched off the evening news, and lay back in the bed. Missy was asleep, and this was usually the only quiet time her parents had with each other every day. 

"No plane crashes," Dana said. 

"That's good. Where did they go?" 

"They wouldn't tell me. Probably a tour of significant alien sightings in the midwest." 

"Area 51?" 

"Maybe. Although Alex might kill Mulder if it's completely business-oriented. I know _I_ would." 

"Then it's a good thing that I am _much_ less dedicated to my job." 

Dana chuckled. "Oh, yes�you're practically a slacker." 

Walter segued easily into his next thought. "Speaking of overdue vacations�" 

"Is this a hint?' 

"Well, I've been thinking�maybe _we_ should take a second honeymoon. Get away for a couple of weeks. Relax. Recharge the batteries." 

She tilted her head. "I don't know�I don't really want to leave Missy for that long�" 

"So we'll bring her with us." 

"Seriously?" 

"Why not? Next year she's going to be in school. This might be the last chance that we have to get off on a really good trip without having to wait for summer vacation, when _everyone_ goes away." 

"True. Did you have anything in mind?" 

"Well," he smiled, letting her know instantly that he did, indeed, have something in mind, "why not show her Ireland?" 

She smiled. "A true second honeymoon." 

He nodded. "We can stay in the same places." 

"See some more relatives." 

"It'll be good for her to know where her mom came from," he agreed. "So, what do you think?" 

"I love it." She leaned over to kiss him. "I love you." 

"Then you won't kill me if I tell you that everything's all planned already?" 

Her mouth dropped open. "What?" 

He leaned back a little, as if hoping to ward off an explosion by diminishing his proximity to the bomb. "Well�it was supposed to be a surprise." He pulled an envelope from the floor on his side of the bed. "We're leaving in two weeks." 

"Two weeks? I couldn't possibly get off of work with only that much notice." 

"It's already arranged. You're having a month off." 

He could see the warring emotions on her face�her sense of independence, always a niggling point in their marriage, as any union of strong people would be, dictating that she be irked at not being consulted first; and her flattery at the entire surprise, her more romantic side coming to the fore. Luckily for him, the romantic won. 

"You talked to my boss?" 

He nodded. 

She shook her head, but started to grin. "I could _never_ have swung a month off on my own. He's a hard-ass." She gave him a gentle push. "Like my old one." 

He chuckled. "Actually, I found him to be quite reasonable." 

"You would."

"We're playing golf on the weekend." 

"Of course you are. Just be careful what you talk about \- the last thing I need is for my boss to know all of the secrets of my personal life." 

"Don't worry about it. I'll even put a good word in for you. And, if I have to, I'll let him win." 

"Well, don't go _too_ far." 

"You sure?" 

"He's signed the vacation request, right?"

"Yup." 

"And he can't take it back?" 

"I don't think so." 

"Then kick his ass." 

He laughed. "Anything you say." 

Alex woke up warm and clean and cuddled up in bed, thanks, he guessed, to Mulder. Either that, or the Orgasm Fairy. 

He was wrapped tightly against Mulder's side. He could tell by his breathing that he was awake, but his eyes were closed. Given the opportunity, he studied his lover� noting for the thousandth time the full lips, the high cheekbones, the dark lashes, the unruly hair. So familiar, changing so little over the years, and still�"Huh." 

"What?" 

"Nothing."

Mulder opened his eyes. " _What_?" 

"You're getting gray hair." 

"Where?" 

"Right there." Alex pointed to a small patch of graying hair along Mulder's left temple. 

"Great." 

"What? It happens to a lot of people, Mulder. At least you're not going bald." 

"Tell that to Skinner. And I'm not going bald, _yet_." 

"If it hasn't happened by now, then it probably isn't going to. Male pattern baldness tends to start in the�" He stopped, realizing he was treading close to dangerous ground. 

"In the what?" 

"Late twenties or thirties," Alex said, grinning. 

"Oh, this is a _wonderful_ conversation." 

"Mulder, it's not so bad. A lot of people turn forty and survive. They even go on to live long and productive lives." 

"And what would _you_ know about it?" 

"I'm going to be forty someday." 

"In six years." 

"If I'm lucky, yes." 

"You're a child." 

Alex laughed. "Cradle-robber. I've _always_ been younger than you." 

"Yeah, but I feel as though I'm getting older faster than you." 

"That's not possible." 

"You're not the one with grey hair." 

"Mulder, by the time that we're done with this relationship, we're both probably going to be in his-and-his wheelchairs. I'll be half-blind, you'll be half-deaf, and neither of us will know what the hell is going on. And we'll still be humping each other, even if nothing comes of it." 

"That's so romantic, I think I'm going to cry." 

"You know what I mean�I don't care what you look like. I'm pretty much in love with you as you are, but I can adapt." He propped himself up on one elbow. "It's the person I love, Fox, not the package." 

"Well that's good to know�considering what's happening to _my_ package." Alex grabbed him, causing Mulder to rear up on the bed. "Hey!" 

"Well, it seems to me that your 'package' is holding up pretty well�for an old guy." 

"Very funny." 

"Hmm�you think?" He was now stroking Mulder's cock. "How's this?" 

"Hil-arious." He managed to catch his voice before it squeaked. Alex had _very_ good hands�very good mouth� very good everything. And, what's more, he seemed to be intent on proving just _how_ good, all at once. 

He reached down, stilling Alex's hand, but keeping it just where it was, his own covering it. "Thanks." 

Alex looked at him, mystified. "For what?" 

"I don't know�for loving me, I guess. For putting up with me. For being good in bed. For accepting me. For wanting to be with me for the next couple of centuries." 

"Side-by-side burial plots?" 

"I was thinking more along the lines of the same casket \- or maybe a nice urn somewhere. It'll save money." 

"Sounds good to me, Mulder." 

Mulder raised his hands, placing one on either side of Alex's face, and drew him in, kissing him deeply, thoroughly, plundering the mouth that he still wanted as fiercely as he had the first time, attached to the body that still drove him crazy, and the man he still loved more dearly than he'd ever loved anyone before in his life. When they parted, he paused, smiling, and said, "Call me Fox." 

The End

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